And hidden in that weekly sequence, there was always a group of characters meant for Svir’s eyes only. Its solitary purpose was to tell him, wherever he wandered, that Lindon was safe in the Admiralty.
The code had been altered, actively altered by Lindon’s intent, to signal Admiralty in jeopardy. Political threat most acute.
Had Parliament ordered the Judiciary to purge the navy? Had the khamtiger Ahanna Croftare finally made her move against Lindon? If so, they were sailing into a trap. Rear Admiral Samne Maroyad commanded all of Isla Cauteria’s naval assets, and as one of the Merit Admirals, she was loyal to Croftare. Svir had not prospered as a cryptarch by sailing into enemy harbors. Or, for that matter, by spending much time in Falcrest’s home waters at all.
“Ziscjaditzcionursz!” His brother’s favorite curse, a complex word for situations when you were complexly fucked. Stars, he wanted something simple, he wanted Iraji’s smile across a game of tiles, Iraji’s round full ass in his hands. But Iraji was gone—
“Fuck!” he shouted. From the foretop, one of the topsail girls looked up at him in alarm. He winked at her.
He knew exactly what Baru was planning. The scope of her vision was spectacular. The depth of her commitment to Cairdine Farrier’s method was appalling. And while he expected she would fail just as spectacularly, because she was about to end her vacation on Helbride (courtesy of Mister Svirakir’s Ashen Sea Touring Concern, All Expenses Paid) and stumble unprepared into the knifepoint mêlée of Falcrest’s interior politics . . .
. . . there was the slightest chance she could provide him with what he needed.
East, he’d told her. East into the unknown. To escape the end of the world. Which was most of the truth. The lightning called to those it had marked: and Svir and Lindon were deeply, permanently marked. The lightning haunted their dreams, summoning them back east across the Mother of Storms to the supercontinent. He fully intended to spend the rest of his life exploring that place in Lindon’s company, and understanding what it had done to them.
But to do that, to establish a self-sufficient colony across the Mother of Storms, one not only capable of supporting his work but of protecting Lindon’s wife Enwan and the children, he needed money. A preposterous amount of money. Ill-advised colonial expeditions could bankrupt entire nations.
An amount of money you could only get through, say, a trade monopoly on an untouched and unexploited market.
What if Baru’s mad idea was the right thing to do? Penetrating the Oriati trade network for Falcrest’s benefit could also be used to his benefit. He didn’t need her to succeed, really. He only needed to invest in her concern and get out before the bubble burst.
And if she was planning on creating just such a bubble, popping Falcrest’s economy to ruinous effect . . . well, she would probably be compromised before she could manage it. But the idea did have a certain dash.
Motion called his eyes down to the deck. There was Iscend Comprine, Hesychast’s walking court recorder, doing acrobatic exercises on the ship’s prow. And there was Baru, sticking her head abovedecks, staring for a moment at Iscend’s body stretched between two lines, then looking around with furtive guilt to see if she’d been noticed.
She wanted him to go back to the Wintercrests. How could he survive that? If Atakaszir learned that Svir had whored himself to Falcrest, he’d murder Svir, brother or no. And even if he didn’t . . . how would Svir ever manage to leave again? How could he explain to Atakaszir that he hated the home Ataka loved?
He could not possibly gamble his life and Lindon’s survival on a mad journey into the Wintercrests to arrange some kind of marriage of nations. Not with Lindon so urgently threatened. No, the game of being a cryptarch taught you to play the margins. Count on the sure thing, stick to the subtle and reliable maneuver, avoid the glare of the spotlight and the desperate foolishness of direct action—
If only Baru had the balls to make him do it! Then there’d be no fucking choice, and he could go north spitting hot blood and cursing her name, taking the exhilarating chance, the long odds that would probably kill him but might deliver all his dreams.
“Your Excellence?” Captain Branne called up from the weather deck. “What do you see?”
“Trouble, Brannie my girl,” he sang back down. “Trouble ahead!”
“Yes, Your Excellence, always. Is the trouble literal or figurative?”
“Literal, I’m afraid.”
He’d just spotted the sails of an Attainer-class frigate maneuvering around Annalila Point. Yes, he recognized that oddly cut boom. It was Hygiatis. One of Samne Maroyad’s ships, coming out from Cauteria to intercept Helbride. She would be in rocket range soon enough. “Light up the sunflash and shoot them a test code. If they ignore us, use the signal fireworks.
“And please find my blackmail files on the officers posted to Hygiatis, under First Fleet’s Northern Command. We’ve a little skirmish to fight, Brannie, and I’ll need my armaments.”
This is the farthest east I’ve ever been,” Barhu said, as hello and good morning to Svir. She’d just fed the ship’s angry dancing seagull, buying its mercy for another watch but reinforcing its mad avian belief that pattering its feet made humans serve it.
“There’s a lot more east in the world.” Svir rubbed his tired eyes. He had been up all morning flashing mysterious numbers at the frigate Hygiatis, which Barhu suspected were dates and addresses of personal and fraught significance to the ship’s captain.
“You’ll get a chance to see it,” she said. “You’ll make that voyage.”
He looked at her sadly. “You’re in a dream. All this, here, on Helbride, it’s not real. It’s a jar they put you in with Yawa, like two fighting snakes. When we land on Cauteria they’ll smash the jar and fish you out.”
“Because we’ll be back in touch with the rest of the Throne?”
“Because your masters expect a victor. And you haven’t given them one.” His sadness reached his eyes. “You know she’ll destroy you, Baru.”
She sized up the island, swiveling at the waist to clear her blind side. This would be the setting for her endgame. By the time they left she would be committed to one path or the other: her trade route, or a bloody apocalypse. Or she would be dead.
Isla Cauteria was a place of rich, flourishing life. Pine forests guarded purple lilac meadows and gravel-surfaced roads. Thin plumes of smoke marked the smokehouses in Cautery Plat, the fishing and trading town on the south end.
“I wish I could see the guano terminals,” she said. “Up on the north shore. Where they sell the fertilizer.”
“Figures,” Svir muttered. “Your first chance to set foot on land in Falcrest proper and all you want to do is bury yourself in birdshit.”
On the farthest right side of her perception was Annalila Fortress. Red-black and hideous in its power. Angular stonework brooding on the long protruding point above Cautery Plat.
“Quite a presence, isn’t it? Like a petrified shark.” Apparitor let his hair down for the wind. “I’ve just flashed them an Imperial Advisory code requesting a private meeting with the commanding officer. Maroyad will allow us in, because she knows we have her on a list of names, names taken from the ledger of the Paybale Investment Bank, a honeypot where she briefly and foolishly kept her money. It’s up to you to use this meeting to our advantage. I won’t risk myself in her sight.”
“I’ll go in there,” Barhu said, quite sure of this part, “and I’ll force Maroyad to allow Eternal into harbor.”
“You’ll convince a Rear Admiral of the Imperial Navy to allow a plague ship to harbor off her island. I see. Sure you don’t want to give up and sail away?”
“I can’t run away,” Barhu said. “I still have to beat Iraji at Purge.”
“That’ll never happen.”
They both pricked their hearts on the double meaning, and looked away from each other, fearing that instant of shared grief. When he looked back, his jaw moved: a swallow, a twinge of fear, then determi
nation.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m going to take on water and sail Helbride on to Falcrest.”
“But—” She glared at him, childishly affronted that he would put anything before her schemes, that he would sail away from Iraji and Eternal and the point of deepest crisis. “Svir, we need you here! Helbride is the only escape we have! And we—we haven’t—”
They hadn’t made a deal. Svir hadn’t agreed to go back home and make the marriage work. If the marriage didn’t work, Yawa’s whole dream of a free Aurdwynn would disintegrate.
“Lindon needs me.” His jaw set in determination. “I’m going to him.”
She stabbed her finger into his right nipple with such precision that he yelped in shock. “What about Iraji? You have the files on the navy! If we lose control of Maroyad, she and the Cancrioth are going to massacre each other, and Iraji’s on their ship—”
“Oh, don’t pretend you need my files. You’re just trying to keep me in play for your marriage quandary—”
“Yes! I am, Svir! We need you, both of us, Yawa and I! Millions of people in Aurdwynn need you!”
“I don’t give a king’s pardon for millions of people! I care about my people, the ones I can protect!” He seized her hand but did not force her back: just clasped her there, like he wanted to comfort her or break her fingers. “Listen to me. Lindon’s sent his danger code. Someone’s moved against him, Parliament or Ahanna Croftare. And if it’s Croftare, then . . .”
“Then Maroyad would be with her. Shit.” No wonder he didn’t want to go ashore. “Are we protected?”
“Yes. There’s not an officer on this island whose career would survive the release of my files to Advance. They do love a navy carcass at the old rag. And they know that if we’re harmed those files will come out.”
“Good.” She took a breath. “Do you know any details about Lindon’s situation?”
“Just the code. I don’t know if he’s holed up in the Admiralty avoiding a Parliamentary summons, or ‘resting’ in a guarded country house in the Selions, or locked in a cell in the basement of the Bleak House.” He took his own long breath through his nose. “So I have to go to him.”
“All right,” Barhu said, thinking quickly. “This whole matter of your brother and the marriage—we’ll delay that until we’re in Falcrest and Lindon is safe.”
“You can’t,” Yawa said. “We can’t. We’ve run out of time.”
Barhu whirled in shock—the Jurispotence was on her blind side, listening. Her eyes were cruel blue and wholly determined. Svir, seeing her, lost all the tone in his face and throat: everything fell slack, as if he were reverting to a pale cave thing that knew only, entirely, how to survive.
“Why not?” Barhu asked, into the hush. “Why can’t we wait?”
“Because the Stakhieczi Necessity has invaded Aurdwynn. Columns of fighters from at least five Mansions are moving south through the duchies Vultjag, Lyxaxu, and Oathsfire.”
“Oh,” Barhu said.
Svir, expressionless: “Who told you?”
“Execarne. His spies on Isla Cauteria just brought him up to date.”
“Have there been battles?”
“No. None yet, and”—Yawa’s voice hooked on a bitter note, her childhood Iolynic accent coming out—“perhaps there won’t be. Treatymont has ordered the Midlands duchies to burn their crops. The navy is preparing to block the river Inirein and destroy key bridges. There will be no more food going north, and no harvest in the Midlands. The invaders will bog down raiding the peasants for food. Plague release will follow shortly. Aurdywnn will be Falcrest’s moat against the Stakhieczi.”
“No!” Barhu barked. “That can’t be allowed. This is—”
Disastrous was not a strong enough word for it. Vultjag had fallen. The Stakhieczi were pillaging Tain Hu’s home.
“I concur,” Yawa said, “with whatever dismay you’re struggling to articulate. This will be a year for the end of old families.”
She turned to Svir and she was merciless. “We must get the Necessary King to stand down his armies before the Masquerade uses plague. But he cannot stand down until he has achieved his objectives: access to fresh water and arable land for the overstrained Mansions. A marriage pact with Governor Heingyl is the only way I can see to satisfy him. And if Baru is not dowry to buy the king’s favor, then your return must be. You will need to go in person to the mountains to negotiate the marriage.”
He stared wildly back at them.
“Svir, please,” Barhu tried, in the little Stakhieczi she knew. “Do this for Tain Hu.”
Svir guffawed explosively, and the sound startled him: he put his fist in his mouth and stared at them with huge shining eyes.
“You’re my punishment,” he said. “You don’t know it, but the stars have chosen you to punish me. I didn’t save Hu. I didn’t save Kyprananoke, or even Iraji. So you, Baru, will use the power of Hu’s death to compel me to my doom.”
His eyes turned upward, as if he could feel all the storms and auroreals of the atmosphere connected by an invisible bolt to the meat of his mind.
“This is my downfall. I have to abandon Lindon. I have to return to everything I fled.”
“I can’t make you do it, Svir,” Barhu lied. She could make him do it. She could threaten to release the truth of his heritage to Farrier.
“If I go,” he said, staring up at the peak of Isla Cauteria, “I don’t think I can come back. My brother will ask me to stay. And I cannot refuse my brother.”
Barhu almost had the courage to reach out and touch his arm. But he would have savaged her for it.
“Why?” she asked him. “Why can’t you leave, once the work’s done?”
Svir smiled with just his eyes. “You know why.”
Because his brother had made himself king of all the mountains and all the Mansions to avenge Svir’s kidnapping. How could Svir dishonor that?
What do we do about him?” Barhu murmured.
Yawa threw a fist of stale bread at the duck below the rail. She missed, narrowly. The duck went after the crumbs. “Rapist,” she muttered. “I hate ducks.”
“Why?”
“I told you. They’re rapists. And they’re hard to strangle.” She rubbed at the nape of her neck. “What do we do about him? Wydd, I don’t know. He acts like you can force him to go. Why don’t you do it?”
“Do you think it’d work?” A coward’s question: she knew it would.
“Hesychast’s leverage certainly works to control me. He will take pieces out of my brother’s head if I don’t obey him, Baru. He’ll hate it, he’ll tell me he hates it, he’ll keep himself up at night and wrestle with his conscience. But it won’t stop him. He’s the softest kind of evil, the kind that thinks through all the hurt it does, and does it anyway.”
Yawa threw another bolt of bread at the little green duck. The wind spun it off toward the prow, down past Helbride’s dolphin-striker. The striker was an armature of the bowsprit that supported the lines that pulled the bowsprit down, toward the hull, countering the upward pull of the forestay lines. You would think a ship was a static thing: but like everything else it was held together by opposing tensions.
“Right now,” Yawa said, “families are losing the only two children I allowed them. Prisons full of men I charged are being broken open, and the men recruited as lackeys and laborers. Fields of crops I seized from the landlords and awarded to tenant farmers are burning. I had good intentions, Baru. Every time. I had sterilization quotas to meet, so I sterilized women with lots of aunts and uncles. I had to show I was tough on my own people, so I filled up the prisons with men I knew deserved it. I had famines to fight, so I built my own food supplies through corruption.
“But it doesn’t matter now, does it? I sacrificed my soul for a better future that will never come. All my work just . . . ice sculpture in the spring. The Stakhieczi invade, and the first thing they conquer is all the good work
I’ve ever done.”
Yawa was right. Even the letter of provisional governorship she’d given Ake was meaningless now. Her whole plan . . .
“Vultjag,” she said, dully. “They’ve taken Vultjag.”
“Oh yes.” Yawa shredded a breadcrust into little particles of sawdust. “The children of Vultjag are hiding in the forest so drunken Stakhieczi brave men don’t force them into service, or into anything else. Ah, the brave men! The shining knights of the mountains, returned at last to Aurdwynn, where we tell stories about their chivalry and bravery! They’re weepers, did you know? They fight battles in tunnels and caves, or out on the crags of the mountains, where one gust of wind can kill a whole company of jagata. They come home with awful dreams, screaming visions, psychotic compulsions. They hurt their wives, terrify their children, and drug themselves to death. Brave men.” She snorted. “Right now, Baru, girls who Tain Hu tutored are being taken as war brides—”
“Will you stop?” Barhu snapped. “I know these things happen. I don’t need the details smeared in my face!”
Yawa thought about this in ominous silence.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m bludgeoning you with my own guilt. And I’m certain the girls in Vultjag are safe. Somehow the Charitable Service could never find them for hygiene inspections, and they had more local collaborators than any mountain men.”
Barhu tried to find some hope. “Ake knows Dziransi personally. We could send her up to Vultjag as our emissary to the Stakhieczi. Maybe she can even arrange the marriage in Svir’s place.”
Yawa scattered crumbs for the duck, to lure it back in for another attack. “Ake’s a woman. The Stakhi won’t listen. Especially not in matters of the king’s marriage. Men decide on marriages, women obey. Remember how Dziransi tried to broker yours?”
Barhu groaned and rubbed her temples. “This would all be so much easier on Taranoke. I could marry your Heingyl Ri, then she could marry the king.”
Yawa stroked one of her wooden hairpins. She seemed to be considering a javelin attack on the duck. “You’ve got to blackmail Svir.”
The Tyrant Page 46
