Heavy Lies The Crown (The Scalussen Chronicles Book 2)

by Ben Galley

  ‘You lie. Farden can’t be killed.’

  Loki cackled harshly. ‘Care to stake everything on it?’ he dared her. Yet Elessi wasn’t a fool. There was still flesh wrapped around this god. In the breeze he smelled of pines, of salt air, of every spice she ever tasted, but Elessi tasted the tang of sweat. There was more human to this god’s form than he would have admitted. She caught the flicker of his eyes. It was the first time she had seen a crack in his perfect act.

  Elessi crossed her arms, picking at her suspicions. ‘Why would you help Farden?’

  ‘You’d think I want the mage dead,’ he said. ‘But in truth, he is the only one who has ever understood me. He and I have a long history, and a fine path ahead of us, I am sure. Just ask Krauslung. The city has never been more at peace.’

  Elessi felt the hooks of the god’s words poking at her mind. She physically shrugged him away, stepping back. ‘You lie.’

  A silver bell appeared in his swift hands. The same bell he had summoned the leviathans with. Elessi’s throat ran dry.

  ‘Then risk it,’ he threatened. ‘You will lose both Scalussen and your precious mage. You can have both, safe and sound, or nothing. You should know better than to meddle in this affair,’ he smirked in a simpering way. ‘This is beyond you, General.’

  Elessi looked up to the stars while she scoffed, organising which foul word would come first. When she looked back, Loki was gone. Just a sprinkle of ash drifting where the air wobbled in his wake.

  The list Elessi still held in her hand crackled as she crushed it in her fist. She didn’t stop until it was a ball that she hurled over the side of the bookship.

  It was strange to see snow in a land of grit and heat. And yet, above the verdant crowns of the palms, dark mountains shuttered half the sky. Black and brown were their slopes, but their summits were white as the mountains of the Emberteeth or the Tausenbar.

  ‘What do you think, Hereni?’

  With Eyrum still resting below, the captain had become the head of the mages and soldiers aboard the bookship. Lerel watched her sharp blue eyes scanning the bay. She had already examined every inch of it through her spyglass, but the mage had her spells.

  The storm had blown them into a broad bay that stretched for a hundred miles north to south. On the maps, it looked to be a bite from Paraia’s west coast. On its southern hook, another small bite had been taken. It was here the armada found itself, one eye watching the waters behind him, the other staring at what promised to be safe harbour at last. They had appeared to have lost the leviathan.

  In the crook of mountains, a forest of palms and fig trees carpeted the foothills. A river cut a yellow beach in two. In a broad clearing, there looked to be a town of wood and stone towers.

  What perturbed them was the smoke rising from them. Not the grey smoke of campfires but the unmistakable thick black smoke of buildings razed.

  ‘Trouble, do you reckon?’ Lerel asked.

  ‘Looks it.’

  The admiral looked down at the crew. Almost every soul stood aboard, both to escape the vomit-washed insides of the ship but also to see what sanctuary their strife and sacrifice had bought. Half of them, from witches to Sirens, looked up to the aftcastle where Lerel and Hereni stood. They waited for a decision. The fear of continuing on, of venturing back into the ocean, was palpable. Frustrated mutters were common in the crowd. Arguments broke out here and there before they were quashed by bystanders. The armada was fracturing fast.

  Lerel watched Eyrum and Elessi appear from the stairwell behind the wheel. Their roles had reversed. The general lent her little arm to the giant Siren, who, to his honour, merely graced it with his touch. He leaned heavily on a pair of crutches that dug gouges in the deck. Bandages swathed him from neck to legs. The healers had to use their knives to save his life; his left thigh stopped at the knee. It cut her deep within to see the general so injured, and she was not alone. Lerel could tell the Siren raged inside with the struggle of even going a dozen paces, but she didn’t dare broach the subject. Instead, she nodded to Elessi while Hereni took over supporting Eyrum.

  Together, they walked to the edge of the aftcastle to look down on the decks and the glowing beach barely a mile away. The crystal waters showed them all manner of fish and rays darting beneath the ships’ shadows.

  Lerel didn’t say a word. She had no idea whether Elessi was still deciding what to do or whether her mind was set. All she knew was that a mutiny might erupt should she order the ships on. But Lerel held her tongue; she knew her advice wasn’t welcome any more.

  ‘We will go ashore!’ Elessi barked. Her voice was cold but clear. Resigned, almost.

  The decks below cheered in muted fashion at the decision. Lerel surreptitiously blew a sigh of relief. Their supplies were in direr shape than the armada itself. Yet Lerel spied some who held back their celebration, preferring to mutter on in huddles.

  Elessi barely looked at Lerel before turning away. Her visit was painfully brief. She patted Eyrum’s arm before aiming for the stairwell.

  ‘For how long, General?’ Lerel shouted after her.

  Elessi shouted back over her shoulder. ‘For as long as you need, Admiral,’ she instructed.

  Lerel blinked at that. It was a jarring change in tone. She didn’t know what was on Elessi’s mind, but she could see it gripped her with iron claws. The general had a purpose, and Lerel wished she knew what it was.

  Hereni’s boots splashed in the crystalline shallows. The water that seeped into her trews was bath-warm. She turned to the others in the small longboat: a handful of her best mages and Bull, who had insisted on coming.

  ‘Mages, with me,’ she ordered.

  The breeze toyed with her hair, yet that was all that moved upon the beach. Hereni shielded her hand from the sun to survey the stillness. Palms waved gently. Green and blue birds still cawed their warning songs as if danger still lurked. A lone Paraian vulegul wheeled ahead, keening softly.

  Hereni and her half-dozen mages trod the wet sand, cautiously passing the tideline into the edge of the village. Shacks of palm wood were now smouldering piles of ash. Belongings had been strewn about, from buckets of fruits and vegetables to straw rabbits for children. Only one corpse lay amongst them: a young man with a wooden spear in his hand. The arrow that killed him was still embedded in the back of his skull. Hereni eyed its green fletching. It almost looked like Arka colours.

  It was on the edge of the village clearing that she heard it: a low whistle she knew hadn’t come from the circling birds. Another trill answered it from the other side of the clearing.

  ‘Shields!’ Hereni yelled. Bull ducked behind her. In the corner of her eye, an arrowhead rested over her shoulder, ready.

  Magick punched the air just in time. Copper-tipped arrows clattered against their shields. The undergrowth thrashed as the attackers sprinted away with shouts.

  No order was necessary. These mages were trained. Beside Hereni, they fanned out, trapping and catching several attackers one by one. Bull was left in the sand, head switching left and right.

  ‘Bastards!’ yelled the one Hereni had tripped. The scrawny boy of sun-tanned skin and fish-cloth squirmed under her boot. His shaved head was tattooed with geometric shapes. When a fireball burst into being in her clawed hand, he fell unnaturally still.

  ‘You don’t look like pirates,’ he muttered.

  ‘That’s because we ain’t, boy. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Sipid. Who the fuck are you?’

  Hereni couldn’t help but laugh. She liked the lad’s spirit. ‘People wanting fresh water and supplies is all we are. Explorers.’

  ‘Really? This is no trick?’

  ‘Yes, really. Do you have a leader? A lord?’

  He squinted. ‘Well, if you get your boot off me, I might tell you.’

  ‘You aren’t going to run?’

  ‘No runnin’ from a mage, is there?’

  ‘Clever boy.’

  Wary-eyed, Sipid got to his feet. The bow in
his hands was ornate, older than he was. Sipid put two fingers between his lips and whistled piercingly. Hereni winced, but ahead of her, the undergrowth of bushes between the palms produced figure after figure. Some even wore entire bushes on their heads and backs, and had yellow, brown, and green paints streaked across their faces. It was perfect camouflage.

  ‘How many are you? What do you call yourselves?’ Hereni asked as they found themselves swiftly surrounded. Her mages looked shifty, concerned.

  The crowd split in two as their apparent leader was revealed.

  Hereni had been expecting some grey-haired elder, or a proud, burly warrior covered in armour, but she mistaken on both fronts.

  Their leader was a child, no more than ten winters old, perhaps. Though her people’s complexions were dark and of olive hair, hers was the colour of Hereni’s: a gold the same hue as the beaches behind them, so long it trailed behind her in a train of braids. A tiara of intricately woven copper threads rested on the flaxen waterfall. She had not a trace of fear in her eyes. Her face was so impassive as to be disconcerting. Even when she spoke in a thick Paraian that Hereni had never heard, her lips moved without engaging the rest of her face.

  ‘Jar Khoum,’ she said in a thin reed of a voice.

  ‘Jar Khoum,’ Hereni repeated, thinking it was a greeting.

  Sipid translated for her. ‘We are the Jar Khoum. And there are… enough of us.’

  ‘Inista, qe ana phero bakwa. Dal.’

  ‘We see the pirates coming every time. They can’t catch us in the forests. They burn our houses, but we build them in a day again. Our real homes are spread throughout the palms and… other place.’ Sipid said no more.

  ‘And we are the Rogue’s Armada. I am Captain Hereni, and we mean you no harm. We’ve only come here for shelter. Water. Supplies. Food,’ Hereni said, raising her hands to the bright yellow berries sprouting from the branches above.

  The child twiddled with one of her long braids. ‘Hia wa ayala?’

  ‘She asks what have you to offer us in return?’ said Sipid.

  Hereni thought. ‘Better arrows than copper, for one thing.’

  She did not look impressed. ‘Then take us to one who can bargain,’ she said in jarringly perfect Commontongue.

  Hereni raised an eyebrow. ‘Back to the ships we go.’

  The bell was incessant, calling her up. Elessi toyed with her dagger, spinning it across the wood of her desk while she waited for somebody to fetch her.

  It was Bull they sent. The lad had sand smeared across his face. ‘There’re people living here. They talk so thick Lerel can barely understand them, but they want to bargain.’

  ‘For what?’ Elessi muttered.

  ‘For their water and supplies.’

  ‘Nothing is free in this world any more.’

  ‘I think they might need us more than we need them, General. Said there were pirates that raid them every few weeks.’

  Elessi prodded the dagger between the gaps in her spread fingers, daring herself to miss to feel something other than frustration. ‘Pirates now?’

  ‘That’s what they said. They want to talk to the person in charge, they said.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Elessi sighed as she got up.

  Within a moment, the hot sun of the Paraian coast was beating down on her once more. She looked left and right along the beleaguered ships. The Winter’s Revenge, though still afloat, had not only grazed unseen reefs, but her repairs had failed and now her rudder had been gouged away. Her ample backside was slowly sinking. The sight of the proud bookship so ruined stabbed her in the heart. Few of the ships looked much better. Each of their captains watched the Autumn’s Vanguard like hawks. The promise of safety hung heavy and uncertain.

  The Vanguard had been nosed into the shallows. Her sharp iron bow carved into the sand and kept her steady. Elessi walked to the bowsprit as she had done in Krauslung, though this time at the speed of Eyrum.

  Lerel and the other leaders were peppered across the bow. Below her, she saw a crowd of people so perfectly camouflaged in foliage and colours that she briefly thought the palm forest had snuck up on them.

  Hereni stood beside a young boy and a child with a long mane of golden hair.

  ‘Where is this leader of theirs?’ Elessi whispered.

  ‘Right there,’ replied Bull. ‘The little one.’

  Elessi looked again at the small child. The fierce and broad white of her eyes was remarkable. She stood with her hands folded calmly behind her back. Her back was razor straight and her chin high, not merely because she had to look up at the bookship’s prow. There was plenty of wonder in the rest of her people, but not her.

  ‘My name is Elessi. I hear you wish to bargain.’

  The child nodded curtly. ‘The Jar Khoum have water, fruit, hogs, partridge and quail, coelo meat to trade.’

  ‘And what do you want in return?’

  The child stepped out from the crowd. ‘Protection.’

  ‘From what?’

  She began to babble in her own language. Elessi saw Lerel wince, but the boy beside Hereni spoke up instead.

  ‘Pirates. Though we’ve learned to hide and run every time they come, the pirates still take our lives, steal crops, burn our trees and buildings. We live constantly looking over our shoulders. Watchers on the mountains night and day. But you, with your ships and all your soldiers and dragons and mages, you can help us.’

  Though Loki’s warning had lurked in her head all day like a stone in a shoe, Elessi shook her head. These people needed none of Loki’s interest. ‘I’m afraid we’ve our own troubles to worry about. We can’t help you. If anythin’, we’re a danger to you. We’ll be leaving after we get supplies and repairs. And if you won’t allow us, then we’ll be on our way.’

  Elessi heard the muttering spread through the crews of the huddled ships. She bit the inside of her lip. She watched Eyrum stare stoically ahead, following orders to the end. Hereni and Bull were with her, too, by their grim nods. Lerel looked expressionless. It was Ko-Tergo and Nerilan that muttered to their nearby cohorts. She heard their complaints drifting to her on the hot air.

  She’ll sink us all.

  How many more do we ’ave to lose, before we say enough, hmm?

  Who knows where the king is? Is he even alive?

  Words. No armour could turn the blades of well-placed words. Elessi wanted to sink between the caulking of the deck. Her best efforts at keeping a last promise went unappreciated. Elessi’s gaze started to fall, but a speck of colour in Hereni’s hand fixed her. A green-fletched arrow.

  ‘Who are these pirates?’ Elessi yelled over the noise of discord.

  ‘They are pale like you,’ the lad pointed. Northern. From Galadaë and further.’

  ‘Arka,’ Lerel hissed.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Elessi in a conspiratorial voice. ‘We can’t concern ourselves, Admiral. As soon as that last leviathan decides to explore this bay, we’re sittin’ pretty, like a buffet,’ Elessi whispered. ‘You said so yourself we’re in no state for another battle. That means we can’t sit around waiting for pirates. And what of Farden and Mithrid?’

  ‘And we can’t keep losing ships, Elessi!’ Lerel snapped. ‘We have to think of ourselves for once!’

  Elessi turned to the Siren at her side. Despite his great strength, even he trembled slightly from the strain of his new crutches. Dark stains had seeped through his bandages.

  ‘Eyrum?’ she asked in the vain hope he would be on her side.

  ‘Looks like a paradise if I have ever seen one,’ he said wistfully before blinking the blur from his eyes. ‘Better odds here in shallow waters.’

  Elessi bowed her head, letting her salt-encrusted silver curls curtain her face. Loki smiled at her from her thoughts, waving that infernal silver bell of his. His threat hung like a storm in her mind. She could have screamed right there and then, cursing the god’s name and his ultimatum to the cerulean sky. The responsibility – the sheer cumbersome weight of choice –
almost crushed her against the railing.

  Almost. An old spark long-forgotten slammed Elessi’s hands against the pockmarked wood. A refusal to cower.

  ‘Fine!’ Elessi yelled. ‘If it means rest and repairs and fresh water, then we will help you as best we can. We’ll promise that and that alone.’

  The child in the shallows considered this for a moment before clapping her hands once. All tension across the beach dissolved into wide smiles from the Jar Khoum. The mutinous mutters behind her were stamped out – for now at least – replaced by thankful cries and somewhat of a mass exodus to the shallows.

  Survivors and sailors threw themselves into longboats or simply hurled themselves overboard into the warm waters. Ship’s officers tried their hardest to keep order and form teams for water and repairs, but even they succumbed to the sheer relief of safe land for the first time since Chaos Sound.

  The Paraians amongst the Scalussen survivors greeted the Jar Khoum as if they were long lost cousins. Elessi even caught Lerel crooking an ear to hear their cheery words. Sea-hardened sailors grabbed fistfuls of the sand and cackled. Others ran straight for the palms, shaking large green fruits from their high branches.

  ‘Lerel,’ Elessi said, catching the admiral as she left.

  She turned only slightly, looking sidelong at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said to you. Because I do need your help, as it turns out. And because I don’t think I’m going to be very popular come this evening. I hope you will speak up for me, if I need it. And if you haven’t lost all faith in me.’

  The admiral held her fierce glare. ‘You didn’t have to ask. I’d have done it for myself anyway, even if you hadn’t apologised.’

  Elessi shook her head. ‘Then you’re a better woman than me.’

  ‘No,’ Lerel replied. ‘I’m just selfish like that.’

  A smile cracked the admiral’s stern face at last. ‘What do you need?’