You Die When You Die Read online

  “Chippaminka, does Calnia not rise above every other town and city like an elk towering over a herd of deermice?”

  His young alchemical bundle carrier and bed mate Chippaminka gripped his arm and pressed her oiled torso against his flank.

  “It is truly amazing,” she replied, her bright eyes satisfyingly widened.

  He held the girl at arm’s length. She was wearing a breechcloth embroidered with an exquisite porcupine-quill swan, the gold swan necklace that he’d given her to reflect light and her new allegiance to Innowak the Sun God, and nothing else. She held his gaze with a coquettish smile then licked her top lip.

  He had to look away.

  He was pleased with his new alchemical bundle carrier. Very pleased. The woman who’d fulfilled the role previously had disappeared early on his embassy, in the great port town at the mouth of the Water Mother. Walking along, he’d turned to ask her something and she hadn’t been there. He’d never seen her again.

  That evening a serving girl had seen he was morose and claimed her dancing would cheer him up. He’d told her to clear off and protested as she’d started to dance anyway, but his angry words had turned to dry squeaks as her sinuous slinkiness, smouldering smile and sparkling eyes had stunned him like a snake spellbinding a squirrel.

  At the end of her dance he’d asked Chippaminka to be his new alchemical bundle carrier. She’d been at his side ever since. She was the perfect companion. She knew when he needed to eat, when he wanted time on his own, when to let him sleep, when to talk, when to stay silent and, most joyfully of all, when to make love and how to leave him smiling for hours.

  Chamberlain Hatho was forty-five years old. He’d always thought that love was at best a delusion, at worst an affectation. But now he knew what love was. Chippaminka had shown him. At least once every waking hour and often in his dreams, he thanked Innowak that he’d met her.

  She gripped his hand. “It is a wonderful city. But what are all these people doing?”

  He pointed out the various stations of industry that lined the road running into the city from the western gate. “Those are knappers knapping flint, then there are metalworkers heating and hammering copper, lead and iron nuggets dug from soil to the north. Next are tanners curing skins with brains, marrow and liver, then there are artisans working with shells, clay, marble, feathers, chert, porcupine quills, turquoise and all manner of other materials to create tools, pipes, baskets, carvings, beads, pottery and more. That next group are tailors who sew, knit, twine, plait and weave cotton, bark fibres and wool from every furry animal in the Swan Empress’s domain.”

  “They seem so diligent. They must be very intelligent.”

  “On the contrary,” smiled Chamberlain Hatho. “These are the Low, the simple people who perform mundane but skilled roles so that people like me—and you, dear Chippaminka—might soar higher than our fellow men and women.”

  The girl nodded. “What are those Low doing?” She pointed at a team of women spraying white clay paint from their mouths in ritualistic unison onto leather shields.

  “They are using paint and saliva as alchemy to create magic shields.”

  “Magic! Whatever next?”

  Chamberlain Hatho surveyed the wondrous, teeming array of sophisticated industry and nodded proudly. “Yes, you must find it simply amazing; like something from one of your tribe’s legends, I should imagine. And this is just the artisan quarter. As you’ll see when we explore, there are thousands of others beavering away throughout Calnia, all dedicated to the tasks essential for keeping a city of twenty-five thousand people clothed, fed and ruling over the empire.”

  “So many?”

  “The empire stretches north and south from Calnia for hundreds of miles along the eastern side of the Water Mother, so, yes, that many are needed.”

  “And what are those mountains, Chamberlain Hatho?”

  Chippaminka nodded at the dozens of flat-topped pyramids rising from the Low’s pole and thatch dwellings like lush islands in a muddy sea. The flanks of the largest were coated with a solid-hued black clay and topped with gold-roofed buildings blazing bright in the sun.

  “They are pyramids, constructions of great magic that house Calnia’s finest. The highest is the Mountain of the Sun, where we are headed now to see the Swan Empress Ayanna herself. You see that pyramid behind it?”

  “The little one on the right? The much less impressive one?”

  “Yes … That is my pyramid. It is not as high as the Mountain of the Sun, but broad enough that its summit holds my own house, slave dormitory and sweat lodge. It is where we will live.”

  “We?”

  “If you will consent to live with me?” He felt the surge of fear, that terrible fear that had grown with his love, as if Innowak could not allow love without fear. The terror that Chippaminka might leave him dizzied him and loosened his bowels.

  “I would love to live with you,” she said and he resisted the urge to jump and clap. That would not look good in front of the Low. He’d never known such a swing of emotions was possible. He’d been terrified. Now, because of a few words from a girl, he had never been happier. Had humans always been so complicated, he wondered, or had the Calnians reached a pinnacle of cultural sophistication which was necessarily accompanied by such conflicting and high emotion?

  “Come, let us report to the empress, then you will see your new home.”

  He headed off along the road with Chippaminka half walking, half dancing to keep up. Her dancing walk was one of the thousand things he loved about her.

  He wrinkled his nose at the acrid whiff from the tanners and turned to Chippaminka. She’d already delved into the alchemical bundle and was holding out a wad of tobacco to render the stench bearable. He opened his mouth and she popped it in, fingers lingering on his lips for an exquisite moment. He squashed the tobacco ball between his molars, then pressed it into his cheek with his tongue. Its sharp taste banished the foul smell immediately.

  Industry banged, chimed and scraped around them like a serenading orchestra and the joy in his heart soared to harmonise with its euphoric tune.

  Ahead on the broad road children who’d been playing with bean shooters, pipestone animals, wooden boats and other toys cleared the way and watched open-mouthed as he passed. As well they might. It was not every day that the Chamberlain, the second equal most important person in Calnia, walked among them. Moreover, his demeanour, outfit and coiffure were enough to strike awe into any that saw him.

  Chippaminka had plucked the hair from his face and the back of his head with fish-bone tweezers that morning. Tweezers gave a much fresher look than the barbaric shell-scraping method of the Low. Long hair fanned out like a downward pointing turkey tail from the nape of his neck, stiffened with bear fat and red dye. The hair on the top of his head was set into a spiked crown with elk fat and black dye, enhanced by the clever positioning of the black feathers plucked from living magnificent split tail birds. He could have used ravens’ feathers, but those were for the Low. Magnificent split tail birds were long-winged creatures that soared on the tropical airs in the sea to the south. Young men and women would prove their skill and bravery by collecting feathers from the adult birds without harming them. It was nigh on impossible, so the feathers were fearfully valuable; the six in Chamberlain Hatho’s hair were worth more than the collected baubles of every Low in Calnia.

  His breechcloth was the supplest fawn leather, his shoes the toughest buffalo. The crowning garment was as wonderful as any of Empress Ayanna’s robes, commissioned in a fit of joy the day after he’d met Chippaminka. Six artisans had worked on it for months while he’d travelled south. It was a cape in the shape of swans’ wings, inlaid with twenty-five thousand tiny conch beads. The whole was to honour the Swan Empress, with each bead representing one citizen in her capital city. He hoped it would impress her.

  Despite his splendid cape, his most subtle adornment was his favourite. It was his strangulation cord. He hoped that he would die b
efore Empress Ayanna. However, if she were to die before him, he would be strangled with the cord of buffalo leather that he’d tanned himself, cut and worn around his neck ever since. He might love Chippaminka with all his heart, but that did not dim his devotion to Ayanna, Swan Empress and worldly embodiment of the Sun God Innowak who flew across the sky every day, bathing the world in warmth and light.

  “Will we be safe from the weather now that we are here, Chamberlain Hatho?” Chippaminka asked. Their journey had been plagued by mighty storms. They’d seen two tornados larger than any he’d heard of and passed through a coastal town which had been destroyed by a great wave two days before. The root of the astonishing weather was the chief finding of Chamberlain Hatho’s mission. He hoped that Empress Ayanna already knew about it and, more importantly, had laid plans to deal with it.

  “Yes,” he said. “You will always be safe with me.”

  They passed from the industrial zone into the musicians’ quarter, where the air vibrated and shook with the music of reed trumpets, deer-hoof and tortoise-shell rattles, clappers, flutes and a variety of drums. A choir started up. The singers held a high note then stepped progressively lower, in a sophisticated, well-practised harmony so beautiful that every hair that Chippaminka hadn’t plucked from Chamberlain Hatho’s body stood on end.

  Two other voices rang out, sounding almost exactly like screams of terror. Hatho looked about for the source, intending to admonish them and to have them executed if they did not apologise to a satisfactorily fawning degree.

  Instead, his mouth dropped open.

  Several of the choir had stone axes in their hands and were attacking other singers. It was no musicians’ squabble over a muddled melody; these were full-strength, killer blows to the head. Blood was spraying. Time slowed as a chunk of brain the size and colour of a heartberry arced through the air and splatted onto Chamberlain Hath’s eye-wateringly valuable cape.

  Further along the road, more men and women were producing weapons and setting about unarmed musicians and other Low. By their look, the attackers were Goachica.

  Chamberlain Hatho guessed what was happening. This was the Goachica strike that he’d warned about for years. The northern province of Goachica had been part of the Calnian empire for two hundred years. Many Goachica lived and worked in Calnia. One of Hatho’s direct underlings—which made her one of the highest ranking people in Calnia—was Goachica.

  Five years before, a few Goachica had stopped paying tribute. This happened every now and then in the empire and it was simple to deal with. You either flattered the rebels into restarting their payments with a visit from a high official such as himself, or you found the ringleader or ringleaders and tortured him, her or them to death in front of the rest.

  However, the previous emperor, Zaltan, had overreacted with the Goachica. He’d sent an army with the orders to kill all who’d withheld taxes. Dozens of Goachica had failed to give tribute only because Goachica’s leaders had told their tax collectors not to collect it. To any objective eye these people were as near to innocent as makes no difference; many even had the bags of wild rice that was Goachica’s main contribution stacked and ready to go to Calnia.

  The Calnian army had killed the lot of them.

  Many relatives and friends of the slain Goachica lived in Calnia and many more had moved there since. Chamberlain Hatho had warned that these people would make trouble and advocated either apologising and giving reparations, or slaughtering them. Other issues, however, had taken precedence, not least Ayanna slaying Zaltan and becoming empress herself.

  Because the massacre was entirely Zaltan’s doing, and because actions like that one had been the chief reason for his assassination, people had thought the Goachica would have forgiven Calnia. Chamberlain Hatho’s had warned that this was unlikely. He was less happy than usual to be proven correct.

  To his right, several of the choir were fighting back with their instruments as weapons and the attackers were held.

  Up ahead, he saw to his relief, three of the Owsla—Malilla Leaper, Sitsi Kestrel and the Owsla’s captain, Sofi Tornado—had appeared. They were making short work of the attackers.

  Malilla Leaper leapt over a man, braining him with her heavy kill staff as she flew. Sitsi Kestrel was standing on a roof, legs planted wide, her huge eyes picking targets, her bow alive in her hands as she loosed arrow after arrow. Sofi Tornado was dancing like a leaf in a gale, dodging attacks and felling Goachica with forehand and backhand blows from her hand axe. They said that Sofi could see a second into the future, which made her impossible to kill. Certainly none of the attacking Goachica came close to landing a blow on her.

  Chamberlain Hatho felt a thrill to see the Owsla again. He had been ashamed when Emperor Zaltan created an elite squad based on his perverted desire for seeing attractive young women hurting and killing people in varied, often grim ways. However, the Owsla had proven to be a fearsomely effective squad of killers. More than that, the unbeatable ten had come to symbolise the success, power and beauty of Calnia.

  Just as their chief god Innowak had tricked Wangobok and stolen the sun, so Calnia’s rise to power had begun with alchemy-charged warriors rising up and freeing the ancient Calnians from imperial tyrants. Now Calnia ruled its own, much larger empire and the Owsla were its cultural and martial pinnacle; the beautiful, skilful, magical deterrent that kept peace across the empire. No chief dared antagonise Ayanna, knowing that a visit from the Calnian Owsla could follow.

  There was a roar as a crowd of Goachica warriors rushed from a side street and charged the three Owsla.

  Chamberlain Hatho gulped. Surely even Sofi Tornado, Malilla Leaper and Sitsi Kestrel would be overwhelmed by such a number? This was a much larger attack than he’d imagined the Goachica capable of.

  He turned to Chippaminka, determined to save her. Their escape lay back the way they had come, surely, into the industrial sector where the Low craftspeople would be better armed and more inclined to fight than the musicians.

  Chippaminka smiled at him sweetly, the same look she gave him before they made love. Had she not seen what was happening?

  Her arm flashed upwards and he felt something strike his neck. A gout of blood splashed onto Chippaminka’s bare chest.

  What was this?

  A second pump of hot blood soaked his smiling love. He saw that she was holding a bloodied blade. No, not a blade. It was her gold Innowak swan necklace.

  She’d slit his throat! His love had slit his throat! With the necklace he’d given her!

  She winked then nodded, as if to say yes, that’s right.

  The world swirled. He collapsed to his knees. He reached up to Chippaminka. This was wrong, it must be a dream, she wouldn’t have, she couldn’t have …

  He felt her small hand grip his wonderfully coiffed hair—coiffed by her with such love and attention.

  She pulled his head back, then wrenched it downwards as she brought up her hard little knee to meet it. He felt his nose pop. Blood blinded him.

  Then he felt her arms around him.

  “No!” she cried. “They’ve killed Chamberlain Hatho!”

  But I’m still alive, he thought. But oh he was tired. So tired. But he was warm in her arms. As good a place as any to sleep, he thought, drifting away.

  Chapter 3

  A Prophecy

  Finnbogi the Boggy tramped across the next low headland, still composing put-downs that would have sunk Garth Anvilchin into Olaf’s Fresh Sea. The long town beach stretched out ahead of him, a good deal wider after the great storm that Frossa the Deep Minded had claimed was Tor’s punishment for some nonsense that Finnbogi couldn’t remember.

  To the west were low, grassed dunes. Golden sandy paths cut through the green hummocks and led to the semi-walled group of huts, longhouses, hardly used smithies and other buildings that comprised Hardwork’s main settlement.

  On the far headland Finnbogi’s aunt Gunnhild Kristlover was pouring holy water into the graves of her ancesto
rs. Aunt Gunnhild was the only person in Hardwork who still worshipped Krist. Her husband Uncle Poppo Whitetooth was meant to be a Kristlover, too, but he didn’t count because he didn’t give a crap about anything. Krist, as far as Finnbogi could see, was the least of all the gods; a dreary, weak entity. Clever but misunderstood Loakie was Finnbogi’s favourite, much better than patronising old Oaden and that brainless thug Tor. Loakie had outwitted giants, fathered a monstrous wolf and a snake that circled the world, and battled the pomposity of the old order. Krist’s greatest achievement was helping to supply a badly planned party.

  Gunnhild jammed the pole back into the holy water hole that led to one rotting corpse and moved onto the next.

  Finnbogi had lived with Aunt Gunnhild and Uncle Poppo since his mother had died giving birth to him, shortly after his father had been killed by a bear. They weren’t his real uncle and aunt, but he’d always called them that. He’d had little to do with his Aunt Gunnhild and she’d watched his development with an air of mostly silent disapproval. Poppo had been more like a fun, friendly but not that bothered older brother than a father.

  Finnbogi walked a little further and the town beach came into view. Down by the edge of Olaf’s Fresh Sea, the children were hanging fish on frames to smoke. Nearer, next to Olaf’s Tree at the edge of the beach, was Thyri Treelegs.

  She was battling an imaginary foe with her shield and sax, darting and prancing confidently, swishing the blade through the air, thrusting the iron shield boss into the faces of pretend enemies.

  Strictly speaking, she shouldn’t have been attacking Olaf’s Tree. While all other trees of any size within a couple of miles of Hardwork had been felled for fuel and building material, this large ash had been preserved because Olaf Worldfinder had decreed that it was a descendant of the World Tree Iggdrasil and therefore sacred. Like most Hardworkers, however, Thyri was much more into Tor than Oaden, and Iggdrasil was more of an Oaden thing. So nobody minded if she gave Iggdrasil a bit of a kicking and a chopping, least of all her.