by C. E. Murphy
"No," Rasim said thoughtfully. "Not really. Knowing your element is an important part of witchery. I grew up with people saying things like that. It doesn't seem crazy to me at all. And besides." He gestured at the water she'd altered. "Something changed. I'm sorry," he added after another moment. "Sorry about what happened to your sister."
Carley's face tightened, then softened a little. "Thanks. So you see why we do this."
"No. I'd understand if you were fighting the men who killed them, or if you went after the—what did you call him? An earl?" It wasn't a word Rasim knew in the common tongue, but it obviously connotated rank. "But these soldiers didn't do anything to you. Leaving them to die without water, or killing them outright, only makes things worse."
The older girl's scowl reappeared. "You're a very strange boy." She stomped out of the galley, leaving Rasim to say, "No," slowly, to her departing back. "I'm just used to being the one who gets picked on. It makes you think differently, that's all." He followed her, not to talk, but to climb the mast and sit in the crow's nest, where he could watch the emerging stars and judge the ship's place on the sea.
It took hours before he was certain, but by midnight he was certain: they were sailing in circles. Either they lacked the skill to sail in a straight line, or Donnin had no intention of returning to land. That would explain her need for fresh water, though it made no sense to Rasim if she was looking for vengeance. "Unless it's a fight she can't win," he said aloud.
Markus spoke from below him: "I wouldn't let her hear me say that, if I was you."
A thrill of cold rushed down Rasim's arms and made his hands icy. "I shouldn't have let anybody hear me say it."
"No," Markus agreed, "but especially the captain. Did you really not lift the waves to save that ship of soldiers?"
Rasim frowned. "I really didn't. I probably would have, if I had the power, but..." He trailed off with a shrug. "Why?"
"Because men like them killed my son, and I'd throw you to a serpent myself if I thought you'd helped them. You're too honest, Ilyaran. You should have just said no. How can we trust you if you admit you'd have saved them?"
"It's safer for you to trust me than the other way around. It's your ship."
"True enough." Markus swung up to the crow's nest, showing more grace than Rasim would have expected from a man Markus's size. "Carley told you about the baron, eh?"
Baron. Another word Rasim didn't know, but it must mean the same thing as earl. He nodded, and so did Markus. "He's got Donnin's girl, Adele. Donnin's bent on rescuing her."
"From soldiers in a fortress?"
Markus waved his hand. "A walled estate, at any rate."
It was close enough to make no difference. "So it really is a fight she can't win. She's safer sailing in circles and letting the crew think they're...what? On their way to find help?"
"Mmm. But it'll only last so long. They'll expect to make landfall, and to avenge their dead. She needs an army of her own, and coin to pay for it."
Rasim shuddered, fear creeping through him to latch chilly fingers at the back of his neck. "Why are you telling me this?"
Markus gave a heavy shrug. "I'll fight for her, and I'll kill for her, but I don't hold with selling one living soul to another, and that's what she has in mind for you, water witch. She might even just sell you to the Baron in exchange for her daughter. A witch who can turn salt water fresh is worth more than a pretty girl, to a soldier king."
It seemed to Rasim that cold had taken up a permanent place in his chest, a lump that would never quite go away. He belonged to the Seamasters' Guild. That meant he'd never feared being indentured or enslaved, though he knew outside of Ilyara orphans often suffered such a fate. And he was outside Ilyara now, and alone. It had never occurred to him what an Ilyaran witch might be worth to a people who had no magic of their own. He clenched his hands together to keep them from shaking, and wished he hadn't eaten anything earlier. It wanted to come back up now, a ball of sickness rising in his belly. Very quietly, he asked, "Will you help me escape?"
"If I can. Might be all I can do is warn you."
The sickness punched inside Rasim, producing a laugh that wasn't funny. "Thank you." He meant it, though he wasn't certain he was happier with the warning. Ignorance might have been more comfortable. More dangerous, too, though: if he suspected he might be sold, he could at least watch for the moment and be prepared to risk the sea instead of the slavers. He said, "Thank you," again, and didn't move when Markus climbed down to find a berth and sleep.
Rasim's life had been quite simple a fortnight earlier. He had hoped for a place on Asindo's ship that would someday allow him to become a captain. He'd expected a life as a shipwright or shore crew. It would have been bearable. Maybe not what he dreamed of, but he would have been with friends and worked hard at a craft he loved. He hadn't imagined a second fire, or uncovering the possibility that Ilyara's foreign queen and newborn heir might have been murdered. He certainly hadn't imagined the loss of his best friend, or a future in chains.
Terror rose in him again, a bleak empty space inside that felt like he could fall into it forever. Rasim ducked his head against his knees, trying to push fear away, trying not to think about it, as if ignoring it would make it disappear. He didn't see how he could go on, his heart throbbing with worry, if he didn't push it away. There had to be something, some way to make it leave him alone, or he would just collapse of terror and be unable to save himself.
Eventually it proved there was something: sleep. He didn't know when he fell asleep, only that the golden dawn on the horizon awakened him, and that in the night his panic had passed into a sense of calm.
Serene, confident, and knowing being scared to death was only half a breath away, Rasim climbed down from the crow's nest to find Captain Donnin. She glanced at him dismissively, but did a double-take of interest when he spoke in a clear, certain voice: "What if I could give you an army?"
Chapter 12
Donnin hustled Rasim below deck before he said another word. She all but threw him into her cabin, slammed the door, and snarled, "What do you know?"
Good sense told him he should be afraid now, but he didn't dare give into it. The slavers or the sea: those were his obvious choices, so he had to force another one, one that he was more likely to survive. The thought hadn't even come to him consciously. He'd just awakened with it in his mind, and acted before he lost confidence in the idea.
Now he straightened to his full height, not tall enough to look Donnin in the eye, but straight-backed and proud, making himself feel better. "I know your people were killed in a raid by a nobleman. I know you want revenge and that your crew is mostly farmers and horsemen. You're surviving against other ships because they don't expect you, but you're going to get slaughtered if you try to get your daughter back. I can help you survive. I can help make sure she survives."
Donnin's nostrils flared. "I'm listening."
"I lied," Rasim said forthrightly. "My ship wasn't destroyed. I was thrown from it when I went after the serpent."
Donnin sneered. "So you think a single ship is going to turn the tide for me?"
"A ship full of sea witches? Yes, probably," Rasim said, "but my ship was only one of many. A third of the Ilyaran fleet is sailing north right now, Captain Donnin. If you want to save your daughter, all you have to do is catch up, and I'll ask them to help you." Rasim drew a deep breath and steeled himself. "But you have to do something for me, too."
Donnin barked incredulous laughter. "I hold all the cards here, Ilyaran. You're on my ship, in the middle of the ocean. What kind of bargaining position do you think you're in?"
The horrible coolness of the serpent's eye surrounding his arm, mashing against his face, rushed through Rasim's memory viscerally. He shoved the dread away and focused on remembering that he, a water witch of no particular skill, had slain a sea serpent single-handedly. It gave him the confidence to say, "I'm in a better bargaining position than you are, Captain. Without me you've got
a day's worth of water left. Carley can barely make it palatable. You know it'll make your crew sick to drink what she purifies, and if they get sick you're that much weaker when you go to war. And I fought a sea serpent to death under the sea. Do you really think I can't make it to land if I have to? I'd rather not," he said judiciously, "but do you think I can't?"
Truthfully, he didn't think he could, but he didn't have to convince himself, only the captain. The greed had gone from her pale eyes, leaving suspicious hope. That was good: that meant he'd made her at least consider that he might have more value to her as a tool rather than a sale. "What do you want from me," she finally asked, grudgingly.
"This—earl? The one who's stolen your daughter. You don't just want to get her back, do you? You want to defeat him. To take his place as the leader of people."
Donnin's eyebrows shot upward. "Do I?"
"You must. Because just getting your daughter back isn't enough. If you rescue her and leave, that leaves him free to come after you. You have to destroy what he's got and take his place. So when we're done, you're going to have an army. And I might need it someday." He spoke quickly, his thoughts skipping ahead of his tongue like lightning dancing across the sea. He was so certain of himself it came as a shock when Donnin laughed.
"Gods, but you've got far-seeing eyes, haven't you, Ilyaran? Are you sure you're only thirteen?"
"I'm thirteen," Rasim muttered, "and clever." There was less pride in the last words than there once might have been. He hadn't been clever enough to save Kisia, and it remained to be seen if he was clever enough to save himself. He could see the things Donnin might need clearly enough, but she might not be willing to see them herself.
She exhaled sharply, almost a laugh. "Clever. I wonder who warned you that you'd need to be." Then she brushed it off, though Rasim doubted the question was laid to rest. "I was mistress of a fair estate," she went on. "Not an earldom, not a kingdom, but enough to be called a fiefdom, perhaps. We had lived in peace a long time, with a guard of twenty or so to keep our borders safe from brigands and highwaymen. The land wasn't lush enough to be coveted, and too far from any rivers to be a port stop. And too far north, for that matter, to interest other lords or ladies. Our winters are cold. Roscord had no real desire for the land, only for what he'd heard about me, until he realized I was too old to bear children."
Rasim eyed her. She looked to be Kisia's mother's age, and there were plenty of women in Ilyara that age who had a babe at breast. Donnin snorted at his expression. "I've fifty years on me, Ilyaran. They've been kind ones, that's all. Hah! Pull your jaw up, water witch, or you'll catch a fish in it. I was beautiful in my youth—"
Rasim blurted, "You still are," and for the first time Donnin's eyes gentled a little, though she also looked amused.
"Thank you, Ilyaran. I wasn't to Roscord's eyes, but my daughter was, and young besides. He took her instead of me, and my point," she said, drawing a breath, "was that yes, I have some knowledge of running an estate, and yes, you're right. I can't afford to leave him alive, nor to let someone else rise in his place. His lands and his people will be mine or I'll die trying."
"And if you don't die trying, you'll lend me an army when the fleet has helped you win your new lands."
"Half an army," Donnin said. "I'll need to protect myself, too. What does a cabin boy need an army for, anyway?"
Half an army would do. Rasim nodded, spat in his hand, and offered it to Donnin. Her nose wrinkled, but she did the same, and they shook hands before he said, "I might not need one at all, but it's always good to have resources." The corner of his mouth turned up. "Pull your jaw up, Captain, or you'll catch a fish in it."
Donnin snapped her mouth shut, though it sounded like she'd already swallowed a fishbone from the coughing and hacking behind sealed lips. "Why," she said when she'd finished choking on surprise, "why do you think you might need an army, Ilyaran?"
"There might be trouble at home," Rasim said quietly.
The captain's gaze sharpened again, but she must have sensed he had no intention of saying more, because after a moment she nodded and moved on. "How do we catch your fleet? No one in the world sails as fast as the Ilyaran ships, and they've two days' head start."
Rasim shrugged. "We catch them in the Northern capital, if we don't catch them before."
#
Carley could turn salt water fresh before they reached the north, to no one's surprise more than Rasim's. None of the others had been able to learn the magic, despite days of trying, but by all Guild dogma, not even Carley should have managed. The crew had drunk their fill in the days before she'd learned thanks to Rasim's efforts, but the morning she tended to the water barrels the ship drifted half a league off course while her friends celebrated. Rasim's mouth pinched as he watched them cavort, though he knew he was being absurd. These were not born sailors. It was amazing they'd gotten the ship out of port, never mind their fumbling ability to attack others or set a long-distance course. Still, it wasn't how an Ilyaran ship would be run. Rasim felt like a sour old captain watching cabin boys drunk on too much wine, not a cabin boy himself, surrounded by men and women ready to kill him if it meant their ends would be achieved.
Besides, he knew he'd already taught them too much. Not just in showing Carley how to purify water, but more worryingly, the crew had paid a great deal of attention when Rasim, frustrated by their ineptitude, had fallen into giving orders. He'd shown them how to best set sails to catch the wind, how to place the rudder to keep the ship from buckling too badly in high waves, and a dozen other small tricks to make the voyage quicker and safer. The pirates were far better sailors than they'd been when they took him on board a week earlier, and that knowledge could be to Ilyara's detriment.
On the other hand, he could have swum to the north more rapidly than they'd been making headway under their earnest but unskilled attempts, so it had been teach them or lose all chance of reuniting with his fleet. They sailed through grey waters now, the sunlight slanting more obliquely and coloring the sea a greyer blue. Rasim had noticed the signs of land a time or two, but between the fish they caught and his—and Carley's—water witchery, he'd seen no need to point them out to Donnin. Like every sailor on the Wafiya, he knew the stars and sun's alignment that would bring them close to the Northern capital. If Siliaria was kind, they would see the Ilyaran fleet on the high seas, and Rasim would have the chance to plead his case before Captain Asindo.
He spent most of his time in the crow's nest, watching for the high masts that would mark the fleet. He had been on Donnin's ship two days before he suggested they sail north, and the pirates, despite his lessons, could not sail a ship as quickly as Ilyarans could. It had taken them a week to cover the distance the fleet would cover in four days, putting them five full days behind Asindo. In the worst scenario, the captain would have already convinced the Northerners of the Ilyaran cause and would have set sail south again, traveling more directly than the pirates and causing Rasim to miss his people entirely.
It didn't bear thinking about. If that was the case, Rasim would entrust himself to the water, and to the Northmen whose blood he shared, rather than to Donnin's need for coin to raise an army. He had begun to understand over the past week just how many uses a foreigner might have for a water witch. They were the same uses any merchant or trader might, of course: divining water along trade routes, making certain soldiers weren't sickened by bad water, washing infection away. In Ilyara those were such ordinary skills Rasim hadn't appreciated how much someone might be willing to pay to own them. It had come as a revelation, and for the first time he'd also realized why Ilyara's army and guard were so strong: the city and its people were far more valuable to the outside world than Rasim could have imagined.
It made the chances of the fires being deliberate, and the queen's death being murder, seem all the higher. There was clearly vast profit in conquering Ilyara.
"What I don't understand," he had said to Carley after drinking her first cup of sea water
turned fresh, "is why only we have such strong magic. We're taught it's because the power is given to the Ilialio's children, to the orphans that each guild takes in. That gift is what makes us useful in our society. But you can learn it, and you're old—"
"I am not old!"
"You are for learning water witchery," Rasim said placidly. "So if islanders can learn it, why haven't you?"
"The lords don't like magic," Carley said with a shrug. "They say it's dangerous. That nobody right would practice it. And mostly we don't quite believe you can do it, either. Nobody turns salt water fresh."
"Every city on the Siliarian Sea has water witches," Rasim disagreed. "Ilyara has a lot more than most, but enough Northmen and islanders trade with us that they must know the magic is real."
"If you were a trader, would you come home and tell your liege there was magic down south and you hadn't been able to bring any back? Or would you keep your mouth shut about the strange things you saw, which were probably just tricks and slight of hand anyway? It's mostly traders and merchants who travel, not rich men, and you Ilyarans had better be glad of that."
She was right, he reflected now, his gaze still fixed on the horizon. It had changed, subtle shadows turning blue there, but he could only think of Carley's grim arguments. Some rich men did travel, and surely sailors told tales even when they shouldn't. Goddess knew Ilyaran ones did, at least. But he knew from Ilyara's history that it was rarely attacked, much less besieged. Maybe the strength of its army was as legendary as its magic was not, but a niggling itch inside Rasim's mind said there was more to it than that. He had never suspected there might be secrets about his home, but they seemed to be unfurling now, teasing at the corners of his mind. He wanted to understand those secrets, no matter what it took.
He startled, thoughts finally recognizing what his eyes had been watching for several minutes. Rasim jumped to his feet, caught the railing, and bellowed to the crew down below: "Land ho!"
