A Surprise in Domus

"This was the most dangerous way I could think of. Following you."

The statement should have thrilled Affe. It spoke of fear, confidence, respect and stubbornness — everything Tuck Duopel would need to survive if he truly wanted to be a mapmaker. And it complimented her, who had beat the boy verbally when he had wanted to follow her. She had made herself his most feared nightmare in just one day.

She should be thrilled. She wasn't.

Something about Tuck made Affe think of Gabel, and she couldn't imagine why. Gabel had been confident, capable and courteous. He had listened when she spoke, even if he hadn't followed her advice. Then again, he was a duplicitous dog who used everyone for his own aims. This young, clumsy day-dreaming fool couldn't lie without blushing.

"You're so clumsy, I'm amazed you've lived this long," she told him every time she helped him stand up, disentangle himself from a bush or fished him out of the river.

Every time she spoke to him, he turned bright red and stammered his way through a thank you. Eventually she told him to shut up and concentrate on walking, and then had to rescind that order when he put so much focus into putting one foot in front of the other he bumped into every tree, bush and stump in the swamp.

But somehow he kept up to her grueling 25-miles-a-day pace, through the thick peat muck on the southern shore of Lapis Amnis. And to keep him alive, she showed him some tips and tricks — usually after he had plummeted through a soft patch of peat into the river or nearly stepped on a snake. It was basic survival, she thought, why doesn't he have the skills? Anyone would know that a sunken mound was a weak spot, especially if there was standing water on it. Or that sleek adders would rest just about any place that got direct sunlight more than four hours a day.

Affe kept a sharp eye out for herself and for Tuck, because he didn't know any better. They ran into more refugees, headed south, but she didn't stop for them. The fires to the north were strong, the smoke covering the horizon. Affe quit looking south, for the fires there were worse than the ones in the north. So it seemed. Maybe she was a bad judge of distances. Maybe the Swind was blowing. In any case, if Mar were fighting Mar, it was only a matter of time before not enough Mar were alive to fight the Mass. If the drakes were as intelligent as she gathered, they could sit on their heels and wait for the Mar to destroy themselves.

She ground her teeth at this frustration, on top of all the others. This was not a logical road she was on: warning the Mardux of the drakes, and telling him what Gabel had done. She should be heading west, away from these fires. It was said there was a great plateau way out west, with almost no water in it. She would like to see that.

The mapmaker had given her word though, and she would deliver the message. If it meant saving all of the Mar, then that's what it meant. She doubted, though, that anyone would listen, and she damned well wasn't going to try to beat it into their heads.

So, she thought, to tally it up, I'm annoyed and angry because everything tells me I should be elsewhere, and somehow I feel I'm supposed to save the Mar, and there's this idiot hanging around on my heels.

In this frame of mind, Affe reached Domus Palus, Tuck dubiously alive behind her. She could swear he had grown while they travelled.

"Domus Palus," she said, and stepped from the mud onto the stone street. She was ten paces in before she realized Tuck wasn't following her.

Domus Palus was like nothing else for five hundred miles in any direction, being first and foremost an actual city but most importantly to a country eye like Tuck's, being made mostly of stone. At one time, the swamp had been cleared for many miles around the city, and great wild rice fields, and other cultivatable produce, had been grown around it. Since then, and since the civil war and the Mar took over from the Fygae, the swamp had come back. One minute, you were under the canopy, with sunlight blocked out, and the next you were on a narrow paved road, surrounded by squat housing, abandoned for years.

The city was built for hundreds of thousands of people who had never lived there. A quarter-mile from its outer row of housing, the current residents had torn down a row of buildings into a low, stone wall, now scarred by magic in a hundred places. Behind that, the first residents lived. Looming over all of the city like a mountain giant, was the citadel, the Mardux's stronghold. It was a monster of architecture, ancient and brooding and unforgiving. Thousands had shed their blood in, around and for it, many of them against their will.

"I'll take you to the market," Affe said. "Then you'll have to be on your own. Follow me."

Tuck followed right away, still gaping, while her words sunk in. He tripped over a rock and cut his hands landing on them. She turned and sighed.

"But," he said, now that he wasn't moving, "you said you'd teach me."

"I said," she said, crossing her arms, "Domus Palus is where you need to go to learn how to be a mapmaker."

Tuck shook his head. "You need to teach me. You puh-promised."

"Why do you stutter?" she asked. "What are you afraid of?"

"You," he said.

"Halt! Who goes there?" A man in a brown cloak appeared, leading a half-dozen men, all dressed in shoddy uniform brown. The lead man carried a sword. The rest had spears with stone heads mounted on them.

Affe opened her mouth to say something like, "Let me do the talking," to Tuck, but one look in his wide eyes said he wouldn't be capable of speech.

She turned to face the man, who could have been Gabel's twin, if Gabel had never shaved and was thirty pounds heavier.

"Affe Kurzeit," she said. "My companion, Tuck Duopel. I am a resident of Domus Palus, returned with a message for Mardux Ubra Feiglan."

A guard snorted. "Feiglan?" he said with some disdain, and Affe tried not to let the chill running down her spine show. "Feiglan died two weeks ago."

"Be quiet," the man said. He stepped forward. "I am Sergeant Tamon Vari," he said, nodding politely to Affe. "Welcome back to Domus, Affe. You have the look of a mapmaker."

"For good reason," she said levelly.

"Mapmakers tend to know how things work," he went on, gesturing with his sword toward Tuck. "But I guess you weren't aware of the Mardux's new law." He gestured more significantly at the boy, who fell over trying to cringe.

"What's that?" Affe said harshly, stepping between the blade and the boy. "Who's the Mardux now, Sarge?"

"Evan Fraaten," Tamon said. "He defeated Feiglan sixteen days ago on the steps of the Citadel. Most of these men," he waved behind him, "came to the city with him."

"And you?" she asked quietly.

He regarded her with warm brown eyes. "I have served three Marduxes in my ten years here. What is another one?"

Practical, she thought. "What is Mardux Fraaten's law that I may not have heard of?"

"The city is closed to non-residents."

She snorted, and looked at the small band of men watching their sergeant. The conversation's level had gotten too low for them to hear. She leaned forward a bit.

"That's crap," she whispered to him, watching his men behind him. "And any one of those idiots would kill you if you don't obey, right?"

"Yes," he replied, his breathe tickling her ear. "If you weren't a woman, we'd ask for some identification, and you'd die."

She stepped back and raised her eyebrows. Loudly, she said, "You wouldn't separate a mother from her son, would you?"

Tamon's eyes widened, and Tuck shivered in his place, hands grasping his knees. Tamon's face broke into a grin. Despite the obviousness that she was too young to be this boy's mother, there was no way he could deny it.

One of the guards snickered. "Been away a while, eh?"

Affe stepped around Tamon and eyed the guard who had spoken. Her hands under her cloak loosened her knife in its sheath, just in case.

"I took the commission from Mardux Feiglan so's I could chase down the bastard's father, who ran off with my son!" she hollered at him in what she hoped was perturbation. "When I found the guy," and she whipped out her knife less than an inch from the grinning man's beard, "I used this to castrate him. You wanna taste it, too?"

"What's castrate?" one of the guards whispered to another one as the one she threatened stared down her knife and gulped.

"So shut up," she warned. "You will let me and my son into Domus Palus, I will talk to your new Mardux, and no one will care." She stepped back and turned to Tamon, smiling and putting her dagger away. "Seems to me, city's big enough as it is to sustain one more mouth."

"Yes, mapmaker, yes it is." Tamon took a look at the sun, then glanced at his men, sweating and glaring. The one guard in particular was red with rage. "You want to say something, Moits?"

The man's head snapped up at Tamon's. Whereas the sergeant was a muscled, full-bearded man, it was obvious Moits was a mercenary a year ago, with ribs to spare on his body and a gut for beer. His patch beard danced across his face as he chewed some leaf. Bloodshot, bulging eyes stared out at his nominal superior. Tamon stepped forward a bit.

"I didn't think so. You all head back to the barracks. I'll escort Affe and her son to their place of residence."

They shambled off. Moits glared at Affe and Tuck until they were all out of sight. Finally, Tamon heaved a big sigh.

"Well?" Affe said. "They look southern."

"South and east," Tamon said. "Fraaten brought them all here along the route you came from. He hasn't seen the battles in the south, and he doesn't listen to the rumors from the north."

"The drakes," Affe said. "The Mass."

Tamon motioned her to start walking. She grabbed one of Tuck's arms so he wouldn't fall.

He shook his head. "The Mardux thinks there's more Mar out there, fighting each other just like we are. Despite turning away several hundred refugees a month. That's why he's closed the city. To keep out the wretched. To keep the war from Domus."

"You'll all starve," she said.

"There's fields seaward of the citadel. They're small." He shook his head. "I've heard about Marduxes who controlled more than Domus Palus. One of these days, I'd like to see one. So," he said. "Who is the boy really?"

"Some kid who thinks he wants to be a mapmaker," she said, waving off the question. Tamon was a likeable guy. Gabel, she reminded herself, had been likeable as well, until you got to know him. One thing you could say about Tuck, he was harmless to everyone but himself. "And Mardux Fraaten beat Mardux Feiglan in a duel?"

"A formal challenge. An honorable victory, you could say. But I'd say the city isn't doing better for this new Mardux."

"Well, that's where we need to go. I have urgent news for the Mardux."

"Concerning what?"

She eyed him, not quite trusting the open face in front of her. "How can you work for him if you don't like what he's doing?"

"What else is there?" He shrugged, then his face hardened. "If your news is a commission from Feiglan, Fraaten won't care to hear it. But if you tell me, someone who cares will hear it."

A resistance, she thought. Her breath caught. What else can go wrong? I don't want to save the Mar! But maybe, if she told him, he would carry the torch.

"The drakes," she said. "The Mass. I know the truth. I was a prisoner of them for several days, until one of the other prisoners led a revolt. They are intelligent, free-thinking ... people, though they don't look or act like us. They gathered information about what we were doing."

He stared at her, a serious expression on his face. "They gathered information?"

"For war! And there are groups of them, different types. They don't all get along. That's how our magocrat helped us escape. He got one group to overpower another. Of course the new group turned around and killed him, but these creatures are relentless."

He nodded. "It's good you told me," Tamon said. "At our next meeting, this kind of information will be useful. I would ask you to come and speak to us."

"No," she said, firmly. "As soon as I tell the Mardux what I came to say, I am leaving here."

"And Tuck? Your apprentice mapmaker?" He grinned a bit at that.

"I'm going with her," Tuck said, and once again Affe had to give the boy a bit of credit. He knew which way the wind blew. Due west.

Tamon shrugged. "Well, the Mardux can't lawfully do anything to you, and he has to abide by your contract, whether he made it to you or a predecessor did. Ah, here we are. Good luck. If you need anything, come by the eastern barracks, about two blocks north of where you first entered the city." And he wandered off, leaving Affe and Tuck standing in the shadow of the citadel.

"He could've gotten us in there," she said, clenching her jaw and staring at the official coming to meet her. The official had a terrible air of Moits about him.

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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