Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  ‘I saw Arithon at Sanpashir, damn you! He has a tongue by lengths nastier than yours, but between his rank insolence, he spoke sound sense! Now here is how we’re going to play this.’

  Cattrick shrieked into the salt-musty cloth. He managed a desperate, jackknifing wrench that bashed one of the mercenaries off-balance. That one jostled an onlooking officer, who dropped something metallic with a belling clang and a splash of broken glass.

  ‘That was the ship’s glass I heard hit the deck?’ Stark out of patience, Parrien vented his testy annoyance on his mercenaries. ‘Keep on like this, and that fool’s hobnailed boots will tear more gaping chunks out of Bransian’s brightwork. Will you just damned well hit that big wretch and be done!’

  ‘Man, at your pleasure.’ Someone in mail with a mace for a fist efficiently reduced Cattrick’s ox struggles to a limpid state of unconsciousness.

  Spring 5654

  Summons for War

  The small war fleet from Avenor swept into Hanshire just after daybreak. Adrift amid the opaline tatters of dawn mist, the ancient walled port rode the jut of the coast in forbidding, tiered splendor, its high turrets crowned by the signal fires kindled to mourn the misfortunate lost mariners.

  From the decks of the royal flagship, Sulfin Evend swept a riveting survey over the city, from its lofty, swept heights, to the charcoal sketch outlines of the merchant docks and the straggled pilings of the fishermen’s wharves. His lean fingers tapped the rail with expressive impatience.

  ‘Fetch his Grace topside,’ he demanded in a lightning shift of mood that allowed for no explanation. His scowl tracked the bosun’s departure, then raked the length of the vessel’s upper deck.

  All appeared in regular order, aboard. The royal flag galley nudged shoreward, her stately grace quickened by oar strokes that sheared curling white water from her beaked prow. Her smart lines and clean brightwork reflected sharp discipline, and her heading clove the arrow-straight course through ebb tide that reflected exemplary seamanship.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ asked her captain, gruff in defense. At his back, the ship’s watch officers shared unsettled glances, unable to tag the detail which had snagged the Alliance Lord Commander’s impatience.

  When Sulfin Evend held to his sulfurous fuming, the sea captain came back, blunt. ‘You know something?’ He endured the Lord Commander’s rebuffing, curt silence with the stoicism that rode his ships through the vagaries of coastal weather.

  ‘I was born here,’ Sulfin Evend admitted at length. His eyes were pale smoke as he resumed his scouring survey. At second glance, even a foreign observer must note the peculiar quiet settled over the shoreline. The brothel windows fronting the dockside quarter showed no lights, nor any sign of debauched guests making their late departures.

  Sulfin Evend gripped the rail and stretched, wringing the kinks of a long, chilly vigil from his taut-knit shoulders. ‘When signal fires burn during daylight, the high council believes there’s cause for war in the wind. Also, you’ll see the wharf’s been cleared of berthed ships.’

  Given the sea captain’s ungratified patience, Avenor’s Lord Commander jabbed stiff fingers through his straw bristle hair. ‘We’re expected. That shouldn’t surprise me. Avenor’s flags will have been identified already by the Koriani scryers who reside in the palace. Hanshire’s Lord Mayor keeps an enclave of them in city pay to report inbound ships to the harbormaster. His council might have a long-standing aversion to royalty, but every ranking town minister with ambition has learned to respect his wife’s habit of ceremony. She’ll have sent a state party to welcome the prince, or you wouldn’t be seeing a yard of free space to tie this ship up at the landing.’

  The galley edged forward, drifting before the reduced beat of her rowers. Ahead, the towers of the upper city loomed from the blurred folds of the bluffs, pricked by the glow of the watch lamps. Ashore, the only sound stirring was the thump of the crab sellers’ skiffs, inbound under oars with filled traps. Through rags of pale mist, the layered silhouettes of the rooftrees and notched walls of the trade mansions framed an interlocking puzzle shaded like mother-of-pearl.

  Hanshire had launched ships in Paravian times, and the striated basalt of the old city battlements still bore the raked gashes left by the balefire of dragons. Ivy clothed the deepest clefts, and softened the arrowed teeth of crenellations still capped in ancient blue slate. Lower down, the newer walls by the quay had been raised out of block from the local quarries. The soft, red-gold sandstone had worn smooth with weather inside the course of five centuries. Boys and lovesick sailors had carved names of sweethearts, or sigils for luck into the jetty, where the tide slapped green at the ebb, and the barnacles clung like calcified mildew.

  But the grand panoply Sulfin Evend expected did not show for the royal arrival. The sea-quarter cove stayed unnaturally subdued, its day-to-day commerce suspended. Knots of loiterers surrounding the fish stalls looked briefly up as Avenor’s fleet of warships made fast to outlying moorings, then returned to their huddles and fast talk.

  Where the flagship docked, a lone officer in the blazon of Hanshire’s elite guard headed a liveried contingent of grooms. Each of these waited with two saddled horses. Ahead and to one side stood another man, of wiry build, his interest too bright to be casual. His hatless, close-cropped head of salt hair riffled to the whispering kiss of the sea breeze. The rest of his lean height was cloaked in black velvet, cut to his boot tops of scarlet-dyed suede with their patterned cuffs beaded with seed pearls. While Avenor’s state galley secured lines and fenders, he measured the performance of her crew, his narrowed eyes the verdigris tint of aged bronze.

  Sulfin Evend muttered what might have been an obscenity, then added, ‘Get his Grace up here, now.’

  The galley captain stirred his planted frame, and all but collided with a figure in a plain cloak. Lysaer s’Ilessid stood one pace away, wrapped in the dull mantle which had secured his anonymity the night before. While the realm’s stick-thin seneschal fidgeted behind, stiff in primped velvets and jeweled hat, the prince said, ‘If you know who that is, you’d best tell me.’

  When Avenor’s Lord Commander did not speak at once, the flag captain smothered a nervous cough. ‘Has to be Raiett, the mayor’s dour brother. Folks call him Raven, for when he appears, they say that fighting soon follows.’

  ‘Then I haven’t misjudged.’ Lysaer’s satisfaction rang through the squealing grate of wood as four sailhands ran the gangway down to the dock. He flipped back his hood, unsnagged a frogged fastening, and tossed his mantle to the ever-present, hovering page boy. Against shredding mists, the revealed magnificence of his sunwheel tabard shot fire like gilt on white porcelain. Beneath the fragile, stamped pallor that lingered from the previous night’s indulgence, his expression was marble, echoed and reinforced by the immaculate set of his shoulders. The sword in his gem-faced scabbard was a field weapon, and the helm tucked under the vambrace on his forearm was forge-hardened steel, without plume or ceremonial visor.

  ‘You expect we’ll have bloodshed?’ Sulfin Evend laughed, his approval as sharp as the well-kept gleam on his chain mail.

  ‘I expect to serve justice.’ Prince Lysaer inclined his head toward the restive party of grooms and blooded horses. Over iron-shod hooves drumming thunder on the planked wharf, he said, ‘Stay at my right hand.’

  While the displaced seneschal gave way with a sniff for losing his accustomed place, the Prince of the Light debarked, with his war commander fallen in step beside him.

  Raiett Raven strode forward. The incised flesh that bracketed his mouth described his rife impatience. ‘Forgive our poor welcome. The Mayor of Hanshire is this moment at sea with our war fleet. He asked that I stay to greet you. If you will please mount? Our high council waits in the old city with news. You’ll have comfort, with wine and refreshment.’

  ‘War fleet?’ Prince Lysaer’s bearing was magisterial silk, immune to such chivvying haste. ‘My news at Avenor contained no detail. I know that four ship
s under my standard have foundered. How many good men were lost with them?’

  Already half-turned to wave the grooms forward, Raiett stalled in a swirl of dark velvet. ‘Eight ships.’ His correction came crisp. ‘The others struck the rocks farther south. The misfortune was a conspirator’s plot. Strategic attacks by barbarians made certain the news was delayed.’

  Lysaer endured through a penetrating glance from inquisitive peridot eyes.

  Then Raiett said, ‘That’s a total loss of your newly launched trade fleet, am I right? As to sailhands and officers, we hear there were drownings and injuries. Firm numbers aren’t in yet. The council will give you what facts we can verify.’

  Lysaer raised his eyebrows, mild before that barrage of obstructive courtesy. ‘What else are you keeping unsaid?’

  From Raiett Raven, a ferocious stillness to mask his keen-edged shift from managed diplomacy to respect. ‘Hear the worst, then.’ He, too, could be blunt. ‘Your shipyard at Riverton has burned to the ground.’

  ‘Go on,’ Lysaer said, his eyes glacial ice, while the leashed rage in him ignited like balefire and the gulls wove oblivious overhead.

  ‘The event happened days ago, but word just arrived in the night. Clan archers took down three messengers. The one who got through came in wounded. We have the man here. He was a laborer, and has sworn before our council as an eyewitness to events.’ Raiett gestured again toward the grooms and readied mounts. ‘You’ll want to question him as soon as may be. He insists Mearn s’Brydion was implicated.’

  ‘And your brother’s warships downcoast?’ Lysaer interjected with the delicacy of jabbed wire.

  ‘Half went for relief of the seamen cast ashore. The others left not an hour ago to seek the s’Brydion state galley. Her flags were sighted off the Riverton estuary one day ahead of the fire. She’ll be detained, once Hanshire’s fleet finds her.’ Raiett folded his arms. Fingers strong and supple as an owl’s talons rested easy on obsidian velvet; his face wore its years of aristocratic power with a seamless and impenetrable reserve. ‘Our magistrate believes she’ll be lurking in the islets downcoast to pick up the shipyard conspirators.’

  ‘My ships, my men, and my forsworn allies,’ Lysaer summed up. Through the calls of the inbound fish trappers, and the cries of street children, begging, which shrilled through the percussion of stamping of horseflesh, he concluded, ‘My seneschal can treat with your council in my place. He’s qualified to take down the witness’s testimony. Please also extend my regrets to your town ministers. For if the s’Brydion clan name is tied in conspiracy with my master shipwright, then more than our cities in Tysan will suffer. A charge of such gravity might see us all hurled into war with the Spinner of Darkness himself.’

  Raiett was too much the man of decision to waste breath in useless argument. ‘Then you’ll sail south directly in support of my mayor’s offensive?’

  ‘I can do nothing else.’ Already Lysaer’s thoughts ranged ahead. His dismissal of his seneschal to act as his envoy was peremptory and final. Since Raiett made no move toward the horses and escort, Avenor’s prince flung back his last word in challenge. ‘Stay and guard your fine city of Hanshire. Or come along with my ships like the crow, and stay at hand for the bloodshed as you please.’

  Raiett laughed. ‘Couched in such terms, what else is left but to soothe down hackled feathers and accept?’

  Under a gold sky and the diving flocks of gulls who scavenged the rocks at low tide, the livery mounts and grooms sent to dispatch Avenor’s royal delegation to the beamed hall in the old city left the wharf with empty saddles. One groom and one gelding trailed after them, bearing the shrewd old seneschal, who would serve as Prince Lysaer’s ambassador. The Mayor of Hanshire’s full brother, Raiett Raven, boarded the Alliance flag galley. He perched at the rail, sharply watchful as his namesake, while Avenor’s fleet of five cast off from the docks and cleaved their smoking-fast course from the harbor.

  Beside him, faced inboard with mailed elbows braced upon streaming, wet wood, Sulfin Evend lounged with the settled ease of close kin. Both men observed the unearthly transformation, as Lysaer in his stainless white-and-gold tabard walked among the sweating banks of oarsmen. After a night passed in killing exertion, he asked more: that they raise themselves to the task of overtaking the fleet which had departed from Hanshire ahead of them.

  ‘Impressive,’ Raiett murmured, drumming his long fingers against the ruby-and-silver bracelets he wore everywhere as a talisman. ‘So tell me, nephew. Since you’ve deserted your birthright for soldiering, is this Prince of the Light all he claims to be?’

  Sulfin Evend returned his enigmatic regard. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘What I see.’ Still entranced by the sacrificial dedication of the rowers, Raiett smiled. ‘His Grace has an impressive style. His handling of men is extraordinary. The shipyard laborer who carried us word of the late conspiracy was drawn to turn informant on a master who trusted him.’

  Mail chinked, sullen, to Sulfin Evend’s shrug. ‘You aren’t one given to belabor the quirks of a simple commoner’s loyalty.’

  ‘Just as you weren’t expected to cast aside the privilege of your family ties.’ Raiett’s gaze over the silver flash of his bracelet assumed the fixed focus of a cat. ‘Your father asks why, since Hanshire has never favored Tysan’s return to the outdated mores of a monarchy.’

  ‘What do you know?’ Sulfin Evend repeated, while the sea heaved, rocking, under the keel, and spray thrashed and creamed to the redoubled pull of timed oars. The galley’s wake streamed behind, white lace against indigo, erased by the indistinct pallor of mist as the fleet drew away from the shoreline.

  Raiett straightened, annoyed. He stabbed a closed fist into the rail as if his clasped fingers held steel. ‘Very well. Forget social subtlety. We’ll play instead for bare facts. Cattrick’s a native Southshire craftsman with cousins and kin ties in Merior. The seer who advises your father’s council links his betrayal of Arithon s’Ffalenn to the demands of a Koriani oath of debt. Since the shipwright’s true loyalty might not ride on crown gold, the question begs asking. Why didn’t Lysaer s’Ilessid prevent his defection? His Grace had to suspect sabotage before this. Why didn’t he catch the flaw in the designs which saw his eight ships hit the rocks?’

  One stroke, two; the galley plowed through a stiffening crosswind, flags cracked to the beat of her urgency. Sulfin Evend jerked his dagger from the sheath at his belt and presented the point toward his uncle. ‘His Grace does not confide in me, ever. Nor would my counsel be fitting in his affairs.’

  ‘Ath!’ Raiett’s quicksilver explosion of frustration warred with his close-held restraint. He did not respond to the ritual opening offered by the bared knife. ‘You can’t believe the man is creation’s divine gift to spare all Athera from darkness!’

  Hard gray to searching, pale green, the eyes of the two men locked. Still holding out the gleaming, sharp blade, Sulfin Evend looked away first.

  Raiett’s utter astonishment woke disused lines of humor over his crag-thin features. When he spoke, he was gruff. ‘Put up that steel.’ He waited until the dagger was sheathed, made tactful at last by a dignity even his striking contempt could not shake. ‘Very well. At least we know it wasn’t the quarrel with your father that sent you off slumming with the guard into Riverton.’

  ‘I stand here alive,’ Sulfin Evend replied, ‘because I pursued the Master of Shadow through a grimward, and the Name of the Light and Lysaer s’Ilessid spared me from the horror which killed every man of my company.’ His final pronouncement came chill as black ice. ‘Every accusation of shadows and fell sorcery the prince charged of the enemy is true. These I have witnessed. The rest you must judge for yourself. Tell my father I have sworn life service to s’Ilessid. I won’t be returning to Hanshire.’

  Beneath, on the benches, the oarsmen streamed sweat, driving heart and sinew to surpass the limitations of human endurance. Avenor’s flag galley cleaved the wavecrests, sheeting spray, while astern, her
sister vessels trailed in their frustrated effort to keep pace.

  Shown such living proof of the prince’s inspired leadership, Raiett chose the grace of retreat. ‘If you won’t come back, at least lend your family the continued benefit of your judgment. You’ve always had a fine touch for state intrigue. Don’t waste that gift in stubborn silence.’

  ‘You always make the loose stones roll your way.’ Sulfin Evend drew breath, the hooked curve of his brows knit through a moment of revealing, self-searching thought. ‘Very well. I see a prince with a vision beleaguered by our political ploys and mean bickering. He fears for us all. His mission to defend humanity’s cause is made vulnerable through our petty differences. Since you ask, yes. I believe his Grace saw the flawed ships’ plans at Riverton for what they were.’

  ‘Damn you, give us particulars,’ Raiett snapped.

  Again goaded to challenge, Sulfin Evend gripped the rail until his sword-hardened strength scored nail-bitten crescents in the varnish. ‘All right. I can speculate. His Grace didn’t expose Cattrick, because Mearn very likely noticed the selfsame discrepancies in the drawings. Add on the persistent frustration, that the wild clans won’t be suborned from the Shadow Master’s influence. Since they die for their causes, Lysaer sought to intimidate them. But his effort to break their heart by enslavement has backlashed, and the Fellowship’s intervention with Caithwood’s trees surprised and outflanked him. Repercussions from that have mangled his sea trade, an ill turn, unless Tysan’s prince seeks a grand cause to unify. Then he might let such a friction raise a force of ill will to eradicate the old bloodlines. Bleed the towns into fighting, he’ll gain troops and funds. For that, I would say he has gambled his ships. Today, perhaps he has won.’