The Stone of Harmony

The naked slavegirl grinned at me through her gag as she lay on the ship’s foredeck. I smiled back at her, and she returned to her struggles against the ropes. They were slaver’s ropes, alchemically elixired both to avoid chaffing feminine skin and to resist feminine efforts to loosen them.

Her name was Luce, and she belonged to me.

Being bound was good for a slavegirl; it boosted her intelligence. The reverse held as well: Going too long without being bound would reduce Luce’s intellect, and if I set her free (or if she somehow did manage to escape), her mind would diminish all the way down to the level of an animal. During the previous stormy days, I had managed to bind Luce as much as she needed, even if it wasn’t as much as she wanted. But now the weather was fine, with a brisk breeze and a blue sky only lightly dotted with white clouds.

Captain Javier came up, carrying his own slavegirl. He set Panya down on the deck and finished putting her into an ife-tie, tethering her bound ankles to the bound wrists behind her back. Joining me at the rail, he said, “We’re about two hours out, John-Smith.” He cocked an eyebrow at me, before returning his attention to the slavegirls. “Two normal hours, not your short ones.” I nodded, not looking away from the show.

Everyone on this world pronounced my name with that audible hyphen. I’d been born John Smith, in California, in what I thought of as my Past. Then, briefly, I’d been John Smith, Ph.D. after earning my degree in organic chemistry. Now I was John-Smith del Novi, an alchemical adept and minor nobleman of the Kingdom of Cern, on a world where, among other things, they divided the day into twenty hours, instead of twenty-four.

Luce’s breasts winked at me as she rolled over while making another futile effort to free her arms. She had nice breasts, small and perky. They went well with the rest of her: Olive skin, a round face, and long chestnut hair. She did a devastating cute, and I liked cute.

Panya, squirming beside her, had black hair and darker skin. Her face and body were those of a classical beauty, rather than a sexy cutie. But then I’d rarely seen an ugly slavegirl on this world. Unless you counted… My eyes went to the place on her thigh where she was no longer branded. In the Ysbene Empire, masters routinely brand their slavegirls, and then rub fire poison into the burn. This keeps the brand-scar from healing over, even with alchemical treatment. The poison also affects the victim’s mind. A branded girl suffers from an unnatural, gnawing fear that never entirely goes away.

Islander alchemists had been searching for an antidote for decades. I’d been the one to develop it. My advantage came from being ‘the odd man from another meta-world’ who knew certain modern lab techniques. I had published my methods and results, of course, and now I was in the consulting business, helping other alchemical adepts in the Island Kingdoms brew their own batches of antidote.

“Two hours to Haaram-Port,” I reflected aloud. Despite Javier’s quip, I had mostly internalized the differences in timekeeping. Days were as long here as on Earth, as far as I could tell, but with the days being divided into twenty longer hours, each of which was further divided into sixty-four minutes of sixty-four seconds. Weeks were eleven days long, instead of seven, grouped into ‘triweeks’ of thirty-three days. Not months, since Trion had two moons, instead of just one.

“We’re still making good time,” Javier said, not taking his eyes from his Panya. It was true. The Fairwinds had made an extraordinarily fast passage from Nissle to The Koonlands, due to a series of freak westerly storms, the last of which had ended last night. Now the sky was blue, although the wind was still fresh and the sea white-flecked, beyond the squirming slavegirls.

“And we’ll have the sea-breeze, right?” I asked, still feeling uncertain about the nautical terms even after many explanations.

“Yes, and no tide worth mentioning. It’s not a day for a triple-tide.” He shot me another glance. “You’re always in a hurry, John-Smith. You took only two days in Nissle, when I expected you to take two weeks. The party afterwards lasted longer. And this has been the fastest run I’d ever made to Haaram-Port. It’ll surprise the Koonlanders to see you so soon.”

“I don’t begrudge the party,” I said. “It gave you a chance to get a little bit of cargo on board, and it delayed my going back out to sea.” I smiled ruefully. “I’m just not a sailor.”

Javier mercifully refrained from agreeing, and we watched our slavegirls squirm some more. They both fought cheerfully against the ropes holding them captive, not only enjoying themselves, but putting on a show for their masters as well.

Both slavegirls had enjoyed the trip, even if Luce had grumbled about my not tying her often enough. In particular, they had fun doing the navigation. Slavegirls were geniuses, and Panya was a much better navigator than her owner. She and Luce treated the calculations as a game, one given extra spice by the way their masters trusted their results.

Panya’s old Ysbene master would never have done so. Except for a small and despised minority of Harmonizers, masters in the Four Empires treat their slavegirls harshly, making point of not listening to them or taking their advice. They consider it unmanly to ‘pamper’ slavegirls the way Islander masters do. Islanders just smile and point at the results. Most Islanders are vaguely deist, these days, rather than pious Harmonizers like the original settlers, but they still generally follow the strictures. As a result, Islander slavegirls are kept cheerful and even saucy, as well as chained and barefoot, and the Island Kingdoms are even more prosperous than the followers of the Harmony of Providence in the Third World or the Four Empires.

Luce grinned at me through her gag again. That was another point of difference: Imperials frequently gag their slaves, while Islanders only rarely do so. I had gagged Luce even less often than a typical Islander master – but this was a special occasion. Besides, Luce was enjoying it. I grinned back at her. That was my gag and my ropes that held my slavegirl helpless as she squirmed, nude and barefoot on the deck, and I settled back to enjoy the rest of the show.

“Don’t tell me it’s ‘obvious,’” I said.

“No, master,” Luce answered. “It’s ridiculous.” She now stood beside me in a shabby-comfortable slave tunic, her arms now free but her ankles close-hobbled in a pair of locking leather cuffs. A matching pair of wrist cuffs waited in my sash. I had decided to keep Luce continuously restrained for the next twenty hours, to make up for scanting her during the voyage here. After that, I’d revert to the recommended pattern for chaining slavegirls, with bedchains at night and various ties and restraints during half her waking hours.

The sight we both found ridiculous was the group of ambassadorial assistants pretending to be stevedores. There were four of them, one each from the Ysbene, Vedic, Ularian, and Sinonese empires, along with their arbi. But their arbi – the animated wooden manikins that did most of the work in the Island Kingdoms – were not rough-hewn laborer types like those now unloading Fairwinds. Rather, they were polished servant-type arbi. Likewise, the clothing worn by the Imperial flunkies themselves bore only a casual resemblance to the rough outfit of the boss stevedore who Captain Javier had hired to move his cargo into a nearby warehouse.

We had encountered the flunkies’ counterparts in the other Island Kingdoms. The Four Empires disapproved mightily of my antidote, but all their embassies could do was to set ‘spies’ on me as an unspoken and ineffective protest. In the other Island Kingdoms, the Imperial spies had at least been competent at skulking. Better than I was. My Cernian mentor, Belzac del Boise, had taught me the basics of shadow-walking, along with alchemy, but I was only fair-to-middling at it.

These four were worse than that. Unless they were deliberately blowing it off. I scanned, again, to see if I could spot any ‘real’ spies, lurking about, using the four flunkies as a distraction. On the other hand, the flunkies had obviously – I suppressed a smirk – been caught by surprise at my unexpectedly early arrival. They wouldn’t even have found us still her on the deck of Fairwinds if we hadn’t been delayed. Shortly after Fairwinds had docked, an arbi had come with a pair of notes. The first note gave Captain Javier permission to go ahead and unload cargo into a bonded warehouse. The second note offered a courteous apology for the delay and requested that Luce and I remain in Fairwinds until the official could arrive himself.

In the meantime, we had the Imperial flunkies to entertain us.

“They expected to have more time to prepare their costumes,” I suggested.

Luce shook her head. “It’s not just that, master. I don’t think they care.”

As I considered that, I massaged Luce’s neck and shoulders and ‘listened’ to her with my master’s Ear. This was a kind of touch-empathy that let me ‘hear’ the sounds Luce’s spirit made. A master’s Ear would work only on a bound slavegirl who belonged to the listening master, and it wouldn’t let him follow her thoughts beyond hearing her mental gears spinning faster or more slowly. However, it did let him hear the emotions and sensations that she felt. Listening with my Ear gave me an unfair advantage over Luce, but it would also punish me if I ever mistreated her. That was why Islander masters pampered their slavegirls, while Imperial masters pointedly avoided using the Ear. Imperials consider great harshness and cruelty to be the ‘proper’ treatment of slavegirls, and listening with a master’s Ear makes that… difficult.

I could hear Luce’s whirling mind and her certainty in her conclusions, and then my physical ears distracted me. Every master in the Island Kingdoms has a master’s Ear, but I had an unusually acute sense of mundane hearing as well.

When I first arrived in this world, I gained a body that matched my idealized body-image: Tall, very strong, with normal vision that no longer needed glasses – and for some reason my subconscious decided that I needed preternaturally good hearing, as well. Standing on the deck, I could make out the orders being given to arbi in the hold, and could almost make out the low-voiced aside from one of the flunkies to another. That sort of thing I had learned to ignore. But now I recognized another pair of voices, those of the Koonlander official and his slavegirl as they approached the quay.

“It’s Reymond van Rassac and his Tess,” I told Luce.

Luce and I had known Reymond and Tess back in Renes, as he had finished a stint as The Koonlands’ ambassador in the Kingdom of Cern’s capital. He had the mahogany skin that was more common in the Island Kingdoms than not, hair that was lighter than his skin and just long enough to tie back, and large friendly eyes. His Tess looked more like a stereotypical Koonlander, with blonde hair and blue eyes, even though he was and she wasn’t.

“I’m pleased and flattered to see you again,” I told Reymond as we knocked fists in the Cernian gesture used in lieu of a handshake.

“I’m sorry about the delay,” Reymond apologized again. “We would have come sooner if we weren’t currently so shorthanded. The King has left for a hunting trip on the South Island, and most of the court is off with him. In fact, I’m the senior Crown Officer here in Haaram-Port right now.

“If you’re the senior official here, then I’m even more flattered,” I said.

Reymond waved that away. “I have all the responsibility and none of the perks,” he said. “Anyway, I have two reasons for coming myself. For one, you are a more distinguished person than you seem to realize – milord del Novi.”

Tess nodded in agreement with her master, and my Ear could hear Luce’s endorsement as well. I suppressed my own wave-away gesture. In truth, it was nice to not have to deal with a bunch of papers and certificates when traveling with Luce. The Island Kingdoms took girl-smuggling seriously, but nobles were granted certain privileges when it came to their own personal slavegirls.

“Hold still, please,” Reymond told Tess. He blindfolded her, a symbolic gesture to make her a formal auditor of our words. She was already elbow-hobbled, with her upper arms tethered behind her back, but her hands and lower arms free. Her legs were free as well, with leather wrappings to protect her feet from the cobblestones.

“John-Smith del Novi,” Reymond addressed me formally. “May I have your oath?”

I stood straight, laid my hand on the hilt of my sword, and repeated the formula I had used on my arrival in the other Island Kingdoms:

“I swear by my honor and my sword, that this girl, Luce, is indeed my own. That I have brought her into The Royal Koonlands for my own pleasure and amusement and not to deliver to another. And that she will remain my own when I depart.”

“Good!” Reymond smiled as he removed Tess’s blindfold. “That will save us fifteen pounds of paper and wax seals.”

“Only fifteen pounds?” I asked. “I thought that a slavegirl couldn’t be taken out of the kingdom until the weight of the paperwork equaled her own.”

Tess giggled. So did Luce, despite having heard me make that joke before. Reymond just snorted. “Sometimes it seems that way,” he admitted.

“My lord, you mentioned a second reason for coming here yourself,” Luce said.

Reymond’s amusement evaporated. “Yes I did. John-Smith, you need to be warned about the Black Druid.”

I stood confused for a moment. The Black Druid, Simon del Vair, had been the black alchemist who had summoned my spirit here, putting it in a new body. It hadn’t worked out as he’d planned, and he had ultimately been put to death in one of the Kingdom of Cern’s rare executions, condemned for the attempted sacrifice of Luce and the actual sacrifices of a number of other slavegirls before her.

Then my mind started working again. Reymond meant Goswami Amrish, the current Black Druid. There had been three or four claimants to the title – and the arcane boost it gave – after Simon del Vair’s death. Amrish had won, in large part, by swearing a very public oath of vengeance against me. By doing so, as I understood it, he had accepted Simon del Vair’s metaphorical debt, and that had allowed him to claim the metaphorical title as well.

I frowned at the memory. Goswami Amrish had already made one attempt to pay off that debt. I would have considered it a spite attack, something to laugh at, except for the black alchemy involved. A slavegirl had died, horribly, to empower it.

I smoothed my frown away and looked a question at Reymond. He passed it silently on to his slavegirl.

“My lord,” Tess said. “Word arrived from Mylonite last Cedarday. Goswami Amrish had been in Mylonite, and had fled after attempting to steal the Stone of Harmony. I put it at two chances in three either that he’ll soon arrive here in The Koonlands, or that he already has.”

“He’s not here yet,” Luce told her. “But I agree that there are at least two chances in three that he’ll be here soon.”

“Oh. Of course,” Tess said. She and Luce were being a pair of clever Sherlock-Holmes slavegirls, and my Ear could hear Luce’s deducer firing away. Reymond massaged Tess’s neck and shoulders, his eyes taking on a blank look as he concentrated on his own Ear.

“Explain yourself, please,” he commanded.

“It’s obvious, master,” Tess said. “If the Black Druid were already here, Luce would have heard news of him in Nissle. But she hasn’t; the recently westerly storms have kept both the news from reaching Nissle and the Black Druid from reaching The Koonlands.”

I gave Luce another caress. My Ear heard her curiosity, but she was waiting for me to ask the question. I went ahead and indulged that curiosity for both of us. “Did Goswami Amrish succeed in stealing the Stone?” I asked.

Reymond shrugged. “No one knows. The official word from Mylonite said ‘attempted,’ and the sealed diplomatic pouch went on to the South Island. The Mylonite Ambassador and all the members of his embassy are there with the court and the King.” He shrugged again. “The unofficial rumors, as you would expect, say both yes and no.”

Luce asked Tess another question, but I didn’t pay attention. I was trying to digest what I already knew. If Goswami Amrish came here to The Koonlands, he’d have to go into hiding. But that was true wherever he went. His resources had been depleted in his struggle to become the Black Druid, and his rivals were positioned to betray him if he tried to flee to one of the Four Empires. The Imperials openly practice red alchemy, where slavegirls are tormented in order to drive alchemical operations, but even they drew the line at killing slavegirls to make their procedures work.

“We’ll have to wait until Amrish actually arrives before we can do anything about him,” I decided. My Ear heard Luce mightily refraining from pointing out how obvious that was. Reymond took it more seriously.

“Goswami Amrish isn’t just an ordinary black alchemist any more,” he told me. “He’s the Black Druid now, John-Smith, with the power of that title. If he comes within reach, don’t hesitate to strike first. In fact, if you notice any signs of him, remember that you are now del Novi, and don’t hesitate take action on your own behalf.”

I nodded my understanding. Law enforcement worked differently here. Private persons took a much more active part in catching criminals. Furthermore, I had additional authority as a nobleman, even if I was a foreign, Cernian ‘del’ lord here in The Koonlands. I was inclined to forget that, and so Reymond was reminding me that I should consider myself deputized.

Reymond and I knocked fists again, and Luce embraced Tess. The two Koonlanders departed, and I gestured for Luce to hold out her arms. After locking on the leather wrist cuffs that matched the ones hobbling her ankles, I slung Luce over my shoulder and set off down the gangplank myself. Behind me, seven of my personal arbi followed with my luggage.

I carried Luce easily. She was average-sized for a slavegirl, while I was much taller and stronger than the average master. In addition, my Ear enabled me to find the most comfortable position for both of us, which also happened to be the most efficient one.

Finally, I had good footwear: Sturdy walking shoes that Cernians insisted on calling ‘boots.’ Above the shoes, I wore shorts and a short-sleeved shirt in a loose, casual style. A sash added a touch of formality to this, but I wore it for practical reasons. The shorts lacked pockets, and I needed a place to carry things.

Luce remained barefoot. If she were walking, I’d have her put on leather foot-wrappings like Tess’s to protect her feet. Or I might make her wear sandals. Foot-wrappings are more common when slavegirls need to go outside in towns or cities, while sandals are more common in the countryside, or when a girl is working inside on a tiled floor. But for the most part slavegirls went barefoot, and in any case they would never wear proper shoes, or even slippers.

The rest of my property followed behind, my luggage carried by four ordinary, or ‘white crystal,’ arbi, and guarded by three ‘martial’ arbi. These last carried swords and had red vitalizing crystals identical to the red crystals of my gentleman’s protective amulet.

I had sent an eighth arbi ahead with a note. The Imperial ‘stevedores’ hadn’t followed it, but instead trailed behind my baggage train, forming a parade as we made our way down an avenue whose name translated from Kush as ‘Bird Street.’ According to the directions I’d received, it made a nearly-straight run from the waterfront district to the Buxom Wench Inn, with a short offset formed by two pairs of doglegs.

After the first set of doglegs, the character of the street changed. The buildings were still the red brick common in Haaram-Port, but with fewer shops and more hôtels – small ones, built for only two or three masters with their slavegirls. They were otherwise typical residences for an Islander town or city, with a room or suite for each master and his girl, plus a kitchen and one or more additional rooms as common areas.

The side-streets also changed, turning into narrow alleys. Some of them, I was certain, led to the sort of inner courtyard where less fastidious gentlemen might go to fight private duels.

“Do you see any real spies watching us?” I asked Luce in a low voice.

“No master.” Even whispering, she didn’t hide her disgust at the Imperial flunkies for failing to use even that elementary ploy.

“There’s obviously a trap ahead, unless the flunkies failed to arrange that as well.” My Ear heard a spark of amusement from her, at my use of that word. “Do you have any clever plans to avoid it?”

“No master,” she whispered again. She could keep her voice lower than mine, taking advantage of my peculiarly keen hearing.

“Forward, then,” I told Luce. “We march boldly on.” She squirmed a bit in response, and I heard her nerves stretch. That didn’t help, not when mine were stretching too. I signaled two of my martial arbi forward to lead the way, leaving the third as a rearguard. I knew the ambush had to come from ahead, but I found it hard not to look back at the known enemies behind me.

I listened. I heard the wooden feet of my own arbi, the subtly different wood-on-cobblestones sound of the Imperial arbi, and the shoe-boots of the four Imperial gentlemen. The way ahead was silent, even to my ears. Uncannily silent, remaining so even when an unpleasantly familiar figure stepped out of a doorway.

I immediately set Luce down and took a step forward, hand on the hilt of my sword. Behind me, I knew without looking, Luce moved to kneel next to the nearest building’s red brick wall. The first lesson a girl learns, even before her first sale to the slave dealers, is to kneel next to the nearest upright – wall, post, or whatever is available – whenever steel is about to be drawn in earnest.

The figure responded to my actions with a mocking raised eyebrow and the ghost of a bow. He was a big man, not quite as tall as me, but broader. I did not know his name, and I suspected that he didn’t know it himself. Instead, I knew him as ‘Brother M.’ He belonged to one of the Elemental Brotherhoods, and so was something like a ninja, something like an assassin, and something like a mercenary spy. An unfortunately competent one, from my point of view, whose stealth could defeat even my ears.

“Fishtails!” Brother M called out, not to me, but to the men behind me. I didn’t look back, but I heard the Imperials flunkies and their arbi withdraw. When they were gone, he turned his attention back to me.

“John-Smith del Novi,” he said. “First, let me apologize for what is about to happen. It is foolish and unprofessional, but my current employer insists on having you delayed. Not for the walk to the Buxom Wench,” he added, “but for the few days you will need to recover from your wounds.”

“Your employer.” I tried a shot in the dark. “Would that be Goswami Amrish?”

“Certainly not!” His tone was mocking, but his eyes glittered. “First, because Goswami Amrish would not be foolish enough to hire me. Second, because I am not foolish enough to accept employment from him. In fact,” he added, “my employer might even be willing to form an alliance with you, against Goswami Amrish.” He offered a razor-thin smile. “For a price, of course.”

“I think not,” I said, attempting to be arch. “Now, you spoke of trying to delay me. Is this a formal challenge?”

“Certainly not,” he repeated. “You have already defeated me once in a duel.”

“Twice,” I corrected him. “You cheated, remember?”

He responded with another slight bow. “Be that as it may, I do wish to extend an invitation before the unpleasantness begins.” He drew a pair of cards from his sash. “Invitations to the Windmill House, a new gentleman’s club that opened just last night. My employer will not object to you enjoying yourself, as you nurse your wounds.”

I considered his words and his attitude, and then stepped forward to accept the cards from him. As I did so, I caught a whiff of an alchemical perfume, not coming from Brother M, but from behind him. I stepped back, and he gave me a third little bow before stepping back himself, around the doorway-corner and out of sight.

Then the arbi came boiling out: Black-painted ninja arbi with red vitalizing crystals. I froze; I hadn’t heard them. Then I drew my sword as I belatedly recognized the perfume. Robert’s Reagent, or at least a variant that could be misted from an atomizer. The elixir drank sound, which is why I hadn’t heard anything. Brother M knew about my preternaturally-keen hearing, knew how I depended on it, and had found a way to silence his arbi against even my ears.

One of my martial arbi went down at once, taking its opponent with it. The remaining two moved to guard my flanks. Like the ninja-arbi, my martial arbi used blunt-tipped swords, intended purely for hacking. My own sword, in contrast, was a cut-and-thrust design. Attacks against arbi had to rely purely on the edge, while a man guarded by a red-crystal amulet required a thrust to get through its protection. Men thus carry cut-and-thrust swords usable against both types of opponents. But even martial arbi are inherently incapable of making thrusting attacks, and so they are usually armed with pure hacking swords.

There were ten black-painted arbi left, enough to beat me down if I got sloppy, even with the inherent inefficiency of hacking attacks against my red-crystal protection. So I would avoid being sloppy. I stood my ground and hacked back, concentrating on being methodical, but still relying more on strength than on finesse. A human opponent would have laughed at me for planting myself so – and then would have skewered me – but it was the right move against arbi. The first one went down in splinters.

I parried twice. My amulet would have kept me from being cut open, if either of those blows had landed, but they still would have bruised and hurt me. Then I struck. My sword was heavier than average, designed to take advantage of my strength, and another ninja-arbi went down. Unfortunately both of my own remaining arbi had gone down as well. They had taken their foes with them, but that still left me alone against six of the black arbi.

There were swordsmen who could routinely take six martial arbi at once, but I wasn’t one of them. An average swordsman could take two or three at once, and I could take four – more because of my strength than my skill. Six at once would… be a stretch. So I would have to stretch.

I sidestepped, parried, stuck, and missed a parry, catching a blow against my leg that smarted. Without my protective amulet, it would have cut deep, notching the bone. I stepped forward, shoved, hacked, and jumped back. Now it was four-to-one. I set myself, ignoring the pain in my leg and letting them come at me. My first stroke was blocked. I parried the riposte and struck again. Three to one. I kicked out to drive the central arbi back, and hissed as the pain flared up. That aborted my intended attack to the right, and I caught another sharp blow, this time on my left arm. I had gotten sloppy. I stepped back and to the side, and managed to recapture my rhythm. I took out the left-hand attacker, then pivoted to strike twice more.

When the last black-painted arbi went down, they all burst into cold flame. I stared at them while they burnt quickly into ashes, with the activating crystals crumbling and their metal settings melting into unnatural lumps. “Piss piss piss piss,” I swore. I was too sore and angry to be surprised. Besides, as an adept myself, I knew exactly how that heatless alchemical fire had had been produced.

“We have company, master,” Luce warned. I looked both up the street and back the way we came. From up ahead, a dark-haired man approached, followed by a pair of arbi carrying a litter with his ife-tied slavegirl. From behind, a man with frizzy blond hair hurried to catch up with us, with the two arbi following him carrying an empty litter.

The frizzy blond arrived first. “John-Smith? My apologies for not meeting you at the quay. I’m Simon Fitz van Dyke.” He offered me a letter of introduction – actually a letter I had written myself, some triweeks ago, to Johann van Isaac and his two partners in the antidote-brewing project.

I glanced at the letter and returned it. “I’m glad to meet you, Simon.” Pulling out my hipflask, I applied aqua vita to my bruised arm and leg. The pain retreated, and I picked Luce up from the cobblestones, holding her cradled in my arms.

“John-Smith?” the dark-haired man said as he came up. “I am Peter Fitz van Dyke, and this is my Nancy.” He started to offer his own letter of introduction, and looked nonplussed when he realized that I didn’t have a free hand to take it.

“I’m glad to meet you Peter, Nancy. This is my Luce. We’re a little tangled up here, however, and I’d prefer to explain things later, in a more comfortable place.” I did, however, take a moment to politely admire Nancy, while Peter did the same with Luce. Beautiful slavegirls are meant to be shown off, after all.

Nancy was chocolate-skinned and curly haired, wearing a plain slave tunic of dull blue. Something led me to guess that she was a native Koonlander despite her decidedly non-stereotypical complexion. That wouldn’t be surprising; the stereotype of the blonde and blue-eyed Koonlander was just that – a stereotype. Like the other Island Kingdoms, the settlement of The Koonlands had attracted immigrants from all four of the Empires and from much of the Third World as well.

Peter and Simon were not native Koonlanders, something their names suggested and their accents confirmed. ‘Fitz van Dyke,’ in the Koonlands, usually meant that a man didn’t want to – or couldn’t – reveal the name of either his father or his natal commune. But resident foreigners commonly used that form too. Peter and Simon both fell into the latter category: Peter spoke Cernian with a vague second-language accent, while Simon spoke it with the accent of the Kingdom of Cern, rather than with the local Koonlander-Cernian one.

“Simon,” Peter said. “I thought you were going to the auctions.”

“I was,” Simon answered. “And then I heard the news of Fairwind’s arrival.” He turned and gave me an extravagant bow. “John-Smith, my misfortune is your good fortune, if you would care to make use of my slave-litter, while we proceed to that more comfortable location for explanations.”

“I thank you,” I said, unable to return his bow while I held Luce. “And Luce is grateful for your offer. Or at least she’d better be,” I glowered. Luce and Nancy both giggled at my mock-threat. “Lead on, and I’ll explain as best as I can.”

The Stone of Harmony, Chapter 1