The Dagger's Path

by Glenda Larke

  Three delicate barbs from a plume nestled there. They looked as fragile and insubstantial as bubbles. The skin of her palm tingled.

  “And these are our weapons.” She looked across at him. “I hope you’ve got more ideas than I have what we can do with these.”

  “Not a clue.”

  “You say the Rani said they came from the Raja’s glory plumes?”

  “I asked Ardhi about that before he left the ship. He said glory plumes are tail plumes, not regalia plumes from the breast. That means they aren’t as potent.”

  “Wonderful.”

  He checked the second piece of bambu, confirming that the contents were identical. “Is it my imagination, or are they glowing?” he asked.

  “When I first saw the regalia plumes, back in the Regal’s castle in Lowmeer, they glowed. I looked through them, and saw this place. I smelled it. I didn’t know where or what I saw, or what I smelled, but it was this island, and the perfume was nutmeg flowers. And then once, when you were wearing Ardhi’s kris, I saw a golden glow. I smelled this world again then, too. And I heard the Raja’s song. I was standing in the palace in Ustgrind, looking at the kris–and I heard a Chenderawasi Avian singing.”

  She put the barbs back into the bambu. “You say the Rani said Ardhi he could stay if he wanted. Has he told you he will?”

  “Not yet.”

  She fixed him with a hard stare. “You haven’t told me what the Rani said when you informed her you’d no right to ask Ardhi to leave the islands.”

  “Ah, yes.” He rubbed a hand over his head in a gesture of embarrassment. “She said we were a successful ternion and we shouldn’t split up. She implied that if we did, we might not be successful. She said it like a warning.”

  “What’s a ternion?”

  “A group of three.”

  She sent him a sidelong glance and raised an eyebrow. “And—?”

  “And what?”

  “Whatever it is she said that you’re not telling me.”

  “Well, nothing really. She just intimated that a group of two men and one woman doesn’t always work out well. What she said, ah, embarrassed both of us. That’s all.”

  “Oh.” She thought about that. “Oh, I see! Well, that doesn’t apply to us, does it? I mean, neither of you are interested in me as more than a friend, and I’m not looking for a husband, so there’s no reason we can’t still be a–what was it? Ternion? How the pox does a bird even know a word like that?”

  He laughed. “You may as well ask how a bird can talk to me inside my head.” Then he added, more seriously, “They’re not birds and we make a grave mistake if we think they are. Call them Avians instead. As for their language, I think the sakti plucks the words out of my mind and translates her thought using the words I already know. In fact, I doubt she uses words at all. Her language is not one of words, but of song and movement and flight and feathers! I guess we shouldn’t ask how to understand the wonder of witcheries either, but just be thankful they exist.”

  She was about to reply when there was another knock at the door. Juster’s voice called out, “Sorrel, are you in there?”

  She pulled a face at Saker and rose to open the door.

  “Have you seen Ardhi?” Juster asked. “He’s supposed to have been back by now, but there’s no sign of him!”

  41

  Farewell to Chenderawasi

  After Saker told him there was a Lowmian ship heading towards Bandar Ruanakula and after Juster said they were leaving, all Ardhi wanted to do was warn his cousin.

  Mate Grig Cranald was organising the last of the payments for the ship’s revictualling, so when he arranged for the longboat to pay a visit to the town, Ardhi asked to go with them. He parted from the others on the town jetty. “I get prau to take me back to ship,” he assured Cranald.

  “Better be hurrying then,” the third mate replied. “Cap’n will be a mite churlish if he has to leave the lagoon without you keeping an eye on the helmsman!”

  Ardhi hurried along to the balai kota, the largest building in the town, where his cousin, Tuan Sri Imbak spent his days dealing with town affairs. The outside–with its massive soaring roof of palm thatch–had impressed the Ardronese sailors; inside it was not like any town hall of their experience and he’d heard their more disparaging remarks. “More like a village market day,” he’d heard the bo’sun say.

  Ardhi knew what he would find: his cousin sitting crossed-legged on the Pashali carpet at one end of the main hall, receiving petitioners, complainants and advisers. Discussions were held over cups of ginger tea flavoured with cloves, cinnamon and pandan leaves–served with sweet rice cakes if the visitor was considered an important man.

  At the other end of the hall, the kerani besar, who was the man in charge of who would see the mayor and when they’d see him, tried to assemble waiting townsfolk and officials into some semblance of order.

  Ardhi knew he’d be the last to be attended to, and he couldn’t afford to wait. Immediately he entered the hall, conversation began to cease around him, only to be followed by a hiss of whispers and a buzz of disapproval. He didn’t halt, not even when the kerani besar jumped up to detain him. Instead he marched across the hall to his cousin, addressed him by the required honorific and added starkly, “Lord Juster wishes to inform you there’s a vessel approaching. It has not yet been identified, but it could possibly be the Lowmians returning for their nutmeg and their factors.”

  When the uproar from that announcement had died down, Imbak cleared the hall of everyone except himself, his three main advisers, his two personal guards–and his cousin.

  “You have gall to come here with this news,” Imbak snapped, his eyes blazing.

  “I came to warn you. My ship is leaving; the other, if it is indeed the Lowmian ship, is your enemy. Lord Juster’s is not.”

  “Coward!”

  Ardhi turned to leave.

  “Wait! You dare to turn your back on me?”

  “Elder Cousin, I am leaving and I will never return. That is punishment enough. There is no greater pain than exile.”

  “It’s what you deserve. But not until this new ship is a wreck and these murdering sailors are dead.”

  “Attack them at night when—”

  “You will lead the attack. You brought them here. You kill them.” He made a gesture to one of his guards. “Iwan. See that Ardhi does not leave the island until this Lowmian ship is sunk. If he tries, kill him.”

  Iwan gestured his obedience and fingered the hilt of his kris. Ardhi knew him; he was Eka’s father, Lastri’s father-in-law. Now he glared his contempt and loathing.

  “There are guns and gunpowder left behind by the factors,” one of the advisers added. “We do not know how to use such things, but doubtless this traitor has learned the workings of such horrors. Let him fight fire with fire.”

  Iwan smiled.

  Ardhi’s heart sank. He was trapped.

  The sun was low in the sky as Golden Petrel edged out of the lagoon. Saker stood with Juster and Finch and Forrest the helmsman, watching their progress.

  Ardhi was still missing, and Juster was furious. He’d had to prevail on several local fishermen with a prau to guide the ship through the opening in the reef. Once out in the open ocean again, he had Forrest steer away from the island group, rather than thread their way through the islands as Ardhi had done for them on their way in.

  “I don’t want to take risks in the dark,” he said to Saker, the words more growled than spoken. “But that is going to bring me much closer to that Lowmian ship than I anticipated. I hope our disguise is good enough.”

  Saker stared at the ship now in full view, bearing down on them fast with a following wind, whereas Golden Petrel was making slow progress. “Is it indeed Spice Winds?”

  “You don’t recognise the fluyt you sailed on?”

  “All fluyts look alike to me.”

  Juster stared at him in disbelief. “Pickle me sour! I do not understand you lubbers with your soil
-clogged boots. Yes, that’s Spice Winds.”

  “Do you think they’ll be firing at us?” Cranald asked. He was jotting some calculations down on a slate. “If we hold course, we’ll pass within range.”

  “We just have to hope they won’t recognise us.”

  No one said anything.

  “All right, get some birds out there, Saker. I want to know what’s happening on board. For example, whether the gunports are open on the port side where we can’t see them, the number of sailors on the topdeck, whatever you can give me.”

  “Birds can’t count past two or three,” Saker muttered, but called on all the nearby seabirds he could find anyway.

  He felt as miserable as a soused herring in a firkin. Why had Ardhi not come back to the ship? He’d been so certain the lascar would join forces with them again, that the man wouldn’t want to stay where he would be shunned and friendless.

  What’s the use in living in a paradise if you have to do it alone? Leak on you, you muckle-top, Ardhi! How will we win this battle without you?

  But perhaps something had happened to him. Perhaps the Tuan Sri had ordered his death or imprisonment.

  I should have gone after him. I should have looked for him. What kind of a friend am I? A beef-witted witan who was curdled crazy enough to be jealous! The Rani was right–if Sorrel wanted a man in her life, the choice was hers, not his, not Ardhi’s.

  “Those birdies of yours see anything, witan?” Juster asked.

  “All looks normal as far as I can tell. But it’s hardly a clear picture I’m getting inside my head, you know. Mostly they’re focused on what they can see to eat in the wake.”

  You’d better be alive, you dagger-wearing addle-pate! Because, I swear, I’ll come looking for you one day.

  “Order a change of tack to port, Mister Finch. That’ll take us further away, and make it clear we aren’t intending to offer them a broadside. But I don’t think they’ll want to harm us. They’re a merchantman, after all. They don’t want a battle on their hands and holes in their hull.”

  “We’ll be presenting our rump to them!” Finch protested to Juster. “Like a catamite waiting t—”

  “Watch your language, Mister Finch! There’s a cleric present.”

  Fiddle-me-witless, how do I tell Sorrel that Ardhi didn’t come back on board and we sailed without him?

  Captain Lustgrader lowered his spyglass.

  “They’ve changed tack,” he muttered. “They don’t want an argument.”

  “I never seen a ship like that one,” the helmsman said. “Got it rigged like a merchantman or a privateer, not a Pashali trader, for all they got that Javenka emblem on the mainsails!”

  “No reason why they can’t learn shipbuilding from their betters,” Lustgrader said. “Va knows, they see plenty of fine sea-going vessels from our hemisphere when they come to Karradar. It’s not Dornbeck’s ship; he wouldn’t be turning tail and running away like this one is. Ignore them. We want to enter the lagoon before the light goes.”

  It would be a close thing. In these southern climes, the light faded from the sky quickly after the sun had set. Va-forsaken place indeed! Still, a good place to make a tidy profit from the ignorant. He had every expectation that his factors had the last couple of nutmeg harvests ready for shipping.

  He studied the wind, the angle of the sun, and ordered all the square-rigged sails furled. He’d brought a vessel into the lagoon before, when he’d captained the carrack Spice Dragon, but that time he’d surveyed the entrance in the ship’s longboat first.

  Well, I won’t have to do that this time, he thought. He had the chart he’d drawn then pinned to the binnacle. Damn, what is that smell? Stinks like a perfumed bawd! Must be the nutmeg flowers… He’d heard they had a stench to them. Last time they had not been flowering.

  About half a mile out from the breaking waves along the reef, a prau sailed out towards them with five young men aboard. They were dressed in their woefully inadequate garb, chests barely covered with loose waistcoats in a deplorable mix of ghastly colours, their heads uncovered except for a twist of cloth worn as a ring around the level of their brow. Then that stupid cloth they wore around their thighs. Like a woman! Well, except for the bare legs and bare feet. By Va, they were always so immodest and–and sensual. Lewdsters all, and he was hanged if he could tell them apart.

  One of the natives called up to the deck, pointing to his chest. He had a huge goitre on one side of his face that distorted his features. “Greetings,” he said. “Name me, Yandi. Me Factor Rudman’s helper. He sends Yandi to show way into lagoon. Big storm came–change reef much. Not like before. Much different now. New way in now. Yandi show. Me come on ship?”

  Lustgrader subdued his distaste. Let no one ever say he was a man who would hurt his chances to salve his pride; pride was the work of A’Va. “Lower the pilot steps, Tolbun,” he said and smiled benignly down into the prau. “Greetings, Yandi. Come aboard.”

  The prau came alongside the moving ship with surprising ease, and Lustgrader had to agree that these heathen bastards knew how to sail. The prau disgorged the man who spoke at least a few words of a respectable language, and pushed away from Spice Winds without so much as bumping the woodwork. The man climbed up, grinning like a dog.

  “Cap’n!” he said, his mouth slitting his brown face, “Factor Rudman sends many greetings.” He pointed to the north. “Opening through reef that way. Yandi show!”

  Without waiting for instructions or permission he leaped across the deck up to the fo’c’sle and out on to the bowsprit, where he stood with his arm pointing in the direction the ship should take. Lustgrader shrugged and nodded to the helmsman. “Do as he says.” He turned to the man he had promoted to first mate after Tolbun’s death. “Alert the lookout aloft to be especially vigilant. Put young Guldon up in the bows to keep an eye on this native.”

  He wasn’t worried; a fluyt was built with a shallow draught to allow it to enter river mouths and poor anchorages. Ahead he thought he could see the place where the waves failed to break; in fact, another prau–with its sail raised–had just passed through, its prow cleaving through what must have been a gap in the coral.

  The forward momentum of Spice Winds was now reliant on the spanker and jib sails, giving it more manoeuvrability. The breeze was from just the right quarter and not too strong.

  Yes, he thought, proud of his ship, she can do this.

  The native fellow appeared to know what he was doing, but even if he hadn’t, Lustgrader’s helmsman was probably the most skilled the fleet had. Aloft, the lookout was signalling all was well; the mate had their most experienced tars on the jib halyards and spanker sheets and Jemson was calling out the depths off the port quarter. Lustgrader gave a glance around. Everyone’s attention was exactly where it should be, focused on their immediate job, alert for changes. He nodded to himself as the ship lined up with the gap perfectly. The waves would carry them in. He could see the flat water of the lagoon beyond, sparkling in the last rays of the setting sun. Some boats–canoes?–were setting out from the shore, too far away to be sure who was in them, but he suspected it would be the factors, coming to welcome him. Poor wretches, marooned in a hell-hole like this one for so long, surrounded by ignorant savages. Well, at least they had managed to teach this Yandi fellow how to speak a civilised tongue.

  The fellow, balanced on the bowsprit and holding on to the foremast stay, turned to look back at him. He was grinning again–and the goitre on his face was gone. Lustgrader blinked, and was still trying to make sense of that, when the man shouted at him, his grasp of the language suddenly much improved. “Aie, captain, remember me? Ardhi the lascar? You did not believe me when I told you your sailors killed Raja of Chenderawasi! Believe it now as you lose your ship.”

  Every eye was riveted on the lascar. He moved before they were even sure what was happening. One moment he was on the bowsprit, then he had launched himself out and away in a curve through the air as elegant as a diving gannet.
>
  Next, just as it seeped through to Lustgrader and the crew that all was not well, just as the captain opened his mouth to give he knew not what command—

  A brilliance flashed to obscure his vision; a roar of an explosion rendered him deaf. Spice Winds juddered under the shock wave, and he staggered on the deck. He might have recovered his balance if the ship hadn’t then ground to an abrupt, shuddering halt. A halt so sudden, everyone standing was flung forward to sprawl on the deck or slam against the structures. A moment later the ship lifted on a wave and moved forward again. This time the accompanying noise was the most ghastly of sounds: the never-to-be-forgotten slow cracking and grinding of a ship’s hull ripping open in its death knell, its guts exposed as the ocean rampaged in.

  Lustgrader, his sight and hearing returning, had time for only one last coherent thought as he struggled to rise. He was facing the stern of the ship and in disbelief he saw the aftcastle with its officers’ cabins slowly subside below the level of the deck, only to be then obliterated by a cloud of dust and smoke.

  Those savages on the boat, he thought, they blew up the rudder while we were all looking ahead.

  With the rudder, the underpinnings of the stern cabins had gone as well. If he’d had longer to think, he might have appreciated the irony of what they’d done. They’d copied his attempt on Golden Petrel, but with far more success. With a little more time, he might even have realised the ship had been simultaneously guided onto the reef, just to make doubly sure it was doomed.

  If he’d had a moment more, he might have seen the war canoes stroking across the lagoon, through water now shadowed by the island as the sun set. He might have heard the war drums.

  However, he had none of those moments. He didn’t even see the instrument of his death. One of Spice Winds’ two small gun carriages on the weather deck broke loose from its moorings as the deck tilted and, still bearing its cannon, it ploughed into him and crushed his chest against the base of the mizzen mast.