The Grace's War

2. Grief

2

GRIEF

“It was a Kalis, and f**k off if you don’t believe me. My cousin swears it. Reckons they’re hiring themselves out now. Bodyguards an’ s**t. Foot soldiers for the Arch Bishop even. Grace, too, I’d say. I mean, why not?” The speaker, a balding, rotund man with a blotchy, red face, took another swill of his glogg and gave the table a thump with his free hand. “Says they needed to blow the entire ship to get rid of her. Would have took back Myrion’s Revenge for the Arch Bishop, otherwise. All by her goddamn self.”

His companion, a dark, equally round woman with a crooked nose and black, curly hair hanging in mats past her shoulders let out a forced guffaw. “Yer cousin’s full ah blovey wine and karakh s**t. No such thing as Kalis. For f**k’s sake, Manch, Eheene goes and blows itself up and everyone starts seeing goddamn ghosts everywhere. Didn’t know you was so stupid as to believe ‘em.”

“There’s Kalis, awright,” the man sitting a few seats down the bar chimed in. He was short and wiry, dressed in filthy Tidal Works coveralls. The skin of his face was saggy and rough, but his green eyes were sharp under the haze of alcohol. He gripped his own mug of glogg with his left hand, mutilated with burns and missing the little and ring fingers. “There’s Kalis. I’s seen ‘em. Seen ‘em myself,” he nodded as if confirming his own statement. Then he coughed once and took a long drink, eyes never leaving the rough grain of the unpolished bar.

The woman wheeled around to face him, unsteady. “Mind yer business little man. Nobody talking to you.”

He looked up from the table to blink at her. “But I’m talking t’you. You say there’s no such thing is Kalis. I say there is. I seen ‘em myself. If you and your fat ass doesn’t believe me...” He paused, swaying in little circles on his stool. “Well, you should.”

The bald man stood and walked over to sit on the other side of him, frowning. “You better bug off now, ‘fore someone gets hurt.”

The little man twisted around, almost falling off his stool. “Wha’s your problem? I’m on your side.”

“I don’t need anyone on my side. ‘Specially not a little Tidal Works slug. We was having a nice conversation, and it didn’t involve you. Mind your own business and f**k off.”

“Enough of this s**t,” the woman grumbled and reached out to grab the little man’s arm.

He spun around in a blur, launching his forehead against her nose with a wet crunch. She grasped at her face with both hands, coughing, blood flooding down her chin onto her filthy blouse.

“Hey!” The bald man shouted, but before he could say anything else, the smaller man had spun back to him, thrusting his elbow into the larger man’s gut. He doubled over, wheezing.

The little man stood, still unsteady, and looked around the bar. It was crowded, but a space had cleared around the altercation. No one spoke.

He glared around at the staring faces, then reached across his body to peel the flesh away from his forearm above his mutilated left hand, revealing a swirl of tattoos their eyes couldn’t focus on. “Told you there were Kalis. Now you’ve seen one too. Tell your friends, if you got any. Nobody’s safe. Nobody ever was.”

He—she—plowed through the silent crowd and out the door as they scrambled to get out of her way.

Syrina stumbled into the night, swerving through alleys and busy streets, before stopping in a crooked doorway halfway down a dead-end lane. She wiped the pouring rain from her face.

“I suppose it’s a good thing you keep doing things like that or I never would have found you. Kalis Syrina, I presume?”

She jumped at the voice and spun around, seeing nobody. Then, outlined in the rain, the shape of a woman a little taller than herself. Brown eyes blinked at her.

Syrina dropped into a fighting stance and felt her heart slow as she dug through her mind for the entrance to the Papsukkal Door, failing to find it.

“Relax,” the other Kalis said. “You realize if I wanted to hurt you, I would have just done it. I’ve been looking for you for a long goddamn time. Like I said, I’d still be looking if you hadn’t made it so easy to find you. You of all people know how hard it is to find a Kalis who doesn’t want to be found.”

Syrina stood straight, but her mind still scrambled to find the door. She took a deep breath to clear her head, but that failed too. “Why?”

“My Ma’is sent me. Why else?”

“There aren’t any Ma’is anymore.”

“There are a few still. The destruction of Eheene didn’t get them all. Unfortunately. But my Ma’is doesn’t like me calling her that anyway. Not anymore. Lifetime of habit, I guess. You met her once a while back, and made quite an impression on her.”

“Ka’id.”

“I’m glad the years of alcoholism and regret haven’t dulled your mind.”

“How did you find me?”

The other Kalis shifted. The rain fell harder, and she stood out in the darkness like a waterproof shadow. “I’m Kirin, by the way. Do you have somewhere out of the rain we can talk, or does it suit you more these days to get wet when you’re not picking fights in bars?”

Syrina gave a reluctant sigh. “Yeah, there’s a place close to here. Wouldn’t call it nice, though.”

Kirin shrugged, the gesture almost invisible even outlined in the downpour.

Syrina led them a half-span through the winding streets to an alley much like the one they started in, pulled up a manhole cover concealed by a layer of greyish-green, sticky mud, and gestured for Kirin to go first.

“Still think I’ll try to kill you?” Kirin asked, but she started down the ladder, her brown eyes glittering.

“I’ve got trust issues.” Syrina waited until Kirin was almost to the bottom before going down, pulling the cover closed after her.

The chamber was small and square, twenty hands to a side. Brass pipes ran along three walls, tarnished with age. The fourth wall was bare limestone brick, more recent than the rest of it. A lone, flickering glow globe sputtered high in one corner, and mangy rags and discarded clothes covered half the floor. Empty rum and glogg bottles lay toppled against the lone bare wall, and a smaller stash of full ones lined the pipes opposite.

Kirin looked around. “Been keeping yourself busy, I see. How did you find this place?”

Syrina slumped down among the full bottles, selected one, and took a long drink before offering it to Kirin, who shook her head. “Luck, I guess,” she answered. “Without Ormo’s tin, I needed to dig around for a place to stay, and I came across it. Don’t know why they walled it up. I bet nobody else does either. Not anymore.” She paused. “f**k knows why anyone does anything.”

“You could have stayed in Ristro.”

“Ah. That’s how you found me.”

Kirin laughed, hesitated a moment, then gestured for the bottle. Syrina handed it to her and Kirin took a sip before passing it back. “Ugh. I guess you couldn’t afford the good stuff.”

Another shrug. “Don’t drink it for the flavor—you’ll be disappointed. It does the trick.”

Kirin settled down on the mass of dirty blankets. “The Astrologers are how I found out you were in Fom almost two years ago. Been here looking ever since, minus a few trips back to check on Ka’id.”

“An Astrologer told you I was in Fom?”

The vague shape of Kirin shifted. “He told me you showed up a while after Eheene went up to give your report. ‘A corpse-filled lifeboat with no oars’ was how he described you. You know how they love to be poetic. He said you were somehow responsible for what happened to Eheene. That some of your friends got caught in the middle and didn’t make it out. According to him, after you gave your report, you spent two months drinking, then caught a smuggler’s ship headed to Fom. No one’s heard from you since.”

Syrina studied the bottle in her hand. “Friends. Yeah.”

Kirin eyed her, but Syrina wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I figured there was more to it than that. I was hoping you’d enlighten me.”

Syrina stared at the bottle for a long time, silent. Then she sighed and took another long drink before passing it back to Kirin. “They say anything else about me?”

“He said a long time ago, Ormo gave you a pet bird—an owl—then had it killed and it woke up some kind of voice in your head. You offered to work for them instead of Ormo because you wanted revenge. Revenge for an owl. Not that I’m one to judge.”

Syrina gestured for the bottle and took another drink. “That’s the short version, or close enough. Turns out if I stay drunk, that voice doesn’t talk.”

“Is that good?”

She stared at the bottle in her hand again and didn’t say anything for a minute. “I don’t know. It is what it is. So why does Ka’id want to see me so bad she’d send one of her Kalis all over Eris to find me?” She handed the bottle to Kirin again and sat back.

“I’m her only Kalis these days, which might tell you how bad she wanted to find you. And I’m here because things are bad, and they’re getting worse.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“I’m trying.”

“Fine.” Syrina made a show of pressing her lips together and gestured for Kirin to continue.

“As far as Kavik can tell—or I guess I should call her Ka’id, since you know who she is, and there’s a new Kavik now. Old habits and all that.” Kirin reached over to pass Syrina the bottle again.

“Just get on with it,” Syrina took another long drink. This time she didn’t hand the bottle back.

“Sorry. So as far as Ka’id can tell, there are five or six High Merchants left. Some ronin Kalis have tracked them down to offer their services, on top of the ones they managed to keep.”

Syrina nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. I might have done the same, six or seven years ago.”

“Me too.”

“Alright, go on.”

“And as far as we can figure, the surviving High Merchant moved to Tyrsh. That’s where Ka’id went too, after the Storik incident, so you can see how the others showing up there might make her nervous.”

Syrina arched her eyebrows. “That’s odd. Why would they go there? Ka’id I could see, since she’s N’naradin, at least supposedly, but the others?”

Kirin moved a half dozen empty bottles out of the way to lean against the bare wall. “So, you don’t know. I didn’t either until Ka’id told me.”

“Know what?”

“The High Merchant’s Syndicate created the Church of N’narad.”

Syrina stared at Kirin for a few seconds, but then she nodded and put the empty bottle down. “Influenced, even controlled, I had a hunch. But created? Still, I guess it makes sense. Get everybody worked up enough about going to Heaven, nobody looks at what’s going on down here. Not to mention the revenue stream. It would explain the war too. I’m guessing the Grace of Fom started taking the Heaven thing a little too seriously to watch her erstwhile boss keep selling out to the heathens in the north.”

“That’s Ka’id’s guess too, in so many words. So yeah, that’s why they went to Tyrsh. But there’s more.”

Syrina gestured for her to continue while she groped around for another bottle.

“The Arch Bishop is getting naphtha again. We can’t figure out who’s supplying it, but somebody up north got control of a refinery, and they’re supplying Tyrsh, just like before. Not as much. Not even close. Still, it’s concerning.”

“Huh.”

“It gets better. there’re rumors about the Grace. She sent people east to the Black Wall. Found some thorn bushes or something that can be sculpted like clay and fired to be harder than steel. Some say they’ve been there and back again, while others say they all died in the Yellow Desert on the way there. But for the past year, strange black weapons have been showing up along the Great Road and in Valez’Mui, so I suspect...Syrina?”

Syrina’s eyes had grown distant and sad as they stared at a point somewhere past Kirin, the fresh bottle forgotten, half-opened in her hand. At her name, she blinked. “Sorry,” she said, her voice soft. “I’m listening. Go on.”

“One last thing. About six months ago, some spies from Tyrsh were caught in Fom and got themselves publicly executed.”

“I remember hearing something about that.”

“Ka’id suspects they came here looking into the Tidal Works. She thinks the Arch Bishop’s plan to break Fom is to disrupt, maybe even destroy it. Or rather, that’s the Syndicate’s plan, and they’re getting Arch Bishop Daliius to go along with it.”

Syrina had managed to pull the cork out of the new bottle, but she put it down again without drinking. “You’re sure?”

Kirin shrugged. “I’m not sure of anything, and neither is Ka’id, but I trust her and she’s worried about it. I thought, since Fom seems to be the place you’ve chosen to drink yourself to death, you’d want to know.”

Syrina stood and leaned against the warm pipes, swaying while Kirin talked. “You don’t know how bad that would be, do you?”

Kirin frowned. Syrina couldn’t see it but she could hear it in her voice. “No, I guess not.”

Syrina staggered over to the ladder, focusing a part of her mind to get her tattoos to purge the alcohol from her system. It had been years since she’d done it, and it was harder than she remembered. It gave her a headache. “Ka’id does. An inkling, anyway, if not all the details. Okay, I’ll go see her. Take me.”

But Kirin was shaking her head as she stood to follow Syrina up the ladder into the rain. “There are a few other things I need to do first, but there’s a Ristroan ship on the Lip. Ka’id’s been hiring them to wait for you there, in case you ever turn up. I think it’s cost half of what was left of her fortune. Can you remember an address in Tyrsh if I tell it to you?”

Syrina scowled a look over her shoulder as she clambered out of the manhole, but didn’t answer.

“Fine. Just thought I should ask. Seems like it’s been a while since you’ve done much. I need to make sure you’re all there.”

“I’m not,” Syrina said as Kirin climbed out of the hole and turned to face her. “But I can remember an address.”

“Great. Looks like maybe we’ll be working together, so I’ll see you soon, yeah?” Kirin’s voice trailed off . She was again just a shape in the rain. A second later, that was gone too.

“Yeah,” Syrina said to herself. “See you soon.”

Then she turned and moved through the darkness toward the lip, peeling her clothes and skin off as she went, until she, too, had disappeared.