At last the door of the inn swung wide. The bird tensed. Onto the porch came a heavy, muscular man, slow of step, dressed in the uniform of a merchant officer: black coat, gold trim, high collar turned up at the back. Over his chest flowed a curly, rust-red beard. The man's eyes were bright and restless. He looked suspicious of the doorway, the horses, the very air.
The carriage driver scampered down from his seat, opened the passenger door and lowered the footstool. The red-bearded man paid no attention. After a moment a servant came from the inn bearing a tray. Upon the tray, a dish, and within the dish the falcon saw four of the tiny, sky-blue eggs of milop birds. The bearded man scooped them into his hand. The servant waited, the horses stamped, the carriage driver stood in the rain, but the man had eyes only for his eggs. With great patience he lifted each one, rolled it in his palm, and then with a surprisingly delicate motion cracked it between his teeth and drank it raw. He did this four times. Then he passed the eggshells to the servant and lumbered toward the carriage.
Now the falcon saw it: the odd, toe-pointing twitch in the man's left foot. Not quite a limp, but unmistakable-his master had demonstrated. Beard, eggs, twitch. It was enough.
The carriage door closed. The driver took his seat and whipped the horses into a trot. Nearly a mile away, the falcon leaped from the mast with a warrior's cry, startling the prisoner so badly he scalded his leg with tar. The ship was already forgotten: the falcon shot like an arrow into the thunderheads, beating west and screaming defiance of the wind. Shedding rain, delighted to be under way, he climbed until land and sea vanished utterly beneath the clouds, and then higher still. At last he burst through to sunlight, and skimmed low over a wild, brooding cloudscape, a kingdom of his own.
All day the bird flew west, hardly changing the tempo of his wingbeats. Toward evening a cloud-murth on a horse like white smoke chased him, leering and waving an axe, but the falcon beat the demon to the edge of the cloudlands, and taunted it with a corkscrew dive at the setting sun. Before dark he saw a pod of whales surging east, and a ship in pursuit.
Under the moon, his name-father, the bird flew faster than ever, and at midnight with a thrill of joy he felt the wind shift behind him. I shall be early, early! He passed gulls, terns, cormorants as if they were standing still. Now and then a wander-star crossed the heavens: one of the metal eyes the ancients hung over Alifros to spy on their enemies.
By the second day the wind tasted of Etherhorde. Marsh gases, city smoke, the sweet reek of farmland. At last it came: a bright coast, ships beyond counting, harbor bells and the barking of dogs, the rumbling, gabbling noise of the afternoon market, the children laughing in the slums, the fortresses, the black parade of the Emperor's Horse Guard. Etherhorde was the mightiest city in the world, and one day (so his master whispered) would be the only city where power dwelled, all others made its vassals.
Being a woken animal, the falcon lacked his wild brethren's terror of cities. Still, he could not ignore their dangers. Men fired arrows, boys threw stones. Thus the falcon took the same course always to his master's window: up the River Ool, past the cargo piers in the estuary where ships from all Alifros docked, past the marble mansions and the Queen's Park, the ironworks where cannon were made for the fleet, the home for veterans maimed by cannon fire, until at last he reached a grim stone compound at the river's edge.
Travelers on the Ool mistook the place for a prison; in fact it was an academy for girls. The unfortunate creatures trapped inside those walls knew the falcon by sight. One-the fair-haired girl who tended to sit alone by the catfish tanks-was looking up at him now. Too clever, that one. She watched him with an awareness that made the bird uncomfortable, as if she guessed his errand, or his master's name. But no matter. She was under the eye of the Sisters, and would never dare to throw a stone.
The far edge of the Academy grounds touched the wall about Mol Etheg, the sacred mountain. Etheg had long since been engulfed by the city, but the ancient pines covering its slopes were unchanged from the time of the Amber Kings, when Etherhorde was a mere collection of huts on the edge of a boundless wood. Today Etheg was under the direct protection of His Supremacy the Emperor. So dire were the punishments for harming its trees that mothers forbade their children to play with pinecones that fell outside the wall. The falcon loved this forest, devoured its rabbits and snakes, dozed in its sunny branches.
Not now, though. Up the mountain he flew, beyond exhaustion, announcing his coming with ragged shrieks. Cliffs appeared, and a lone lake, and then on the broken summit rose the huge, wet bulk of Castle Maag. The oldest structure in Etherhorde, Maag was the ancestral home of the ruling family, a darker and more private place than the five-domed seat of Empire in the city below. There the Emperor stunned his subjects with opulence: the crown of rubies, the throne cut from a single pale purple crystal. Here a pair of bejeweled concubines swatted beetles on a terrace, and an ancient gardener raked lilac petals into drifts, and the Queen Mother walked a white boar on a chain about the soggy grounds.
Above them all, in the Weather Tower, shutters flew open. Sandor Ott, Spymaster of the Imperium, held a gloved hand from the window. He was an old man, and rather short, but his body was lean and strong. Eagerly he watched the bird's approach. Below the glove the skin of his arm was a crisscrossed tangle of scars.
With a last flurry the bird alighted. The old man cooed to him and stroked his back.
"Niriviel, my champion! You'll rest, and eat from my own plate tonight! But what news, finest falcon? Tell me at once!"
Within the tower chamber, a group of younger men huddled, breathless. They were six in all: poised and muscular, with wary eyes and handsome faces. Some wore heavy silk, others the jaquina shirts of snow-white cotton made popular by a visit from the Prince of Talturi. None carried weapons (only Ott had that privilege within the castle walls) but most carried scars. One had been tending the fire when the bird arrived, and stood gaping, the poker forgotten in his hand. Indeed, no one moved a finger as Ott cocked his ear close to that savage beak. The men had spent the night shivering and sullen, not believing any bird would come; they would have laughed at the old warrior if they dared. But here it stood. Would the rest of his tale prove true? Would speech come from a wild thing, here in their very midst?
No, it would not: Niriviel's voice was only a shrill whistle, the same as any bird of prey. But Sandor Ott listened motionless, so they did as well. The bird gave a longer trill, and then a curious hop on the spymaster's arm, as if attempting a demonstration.
Ott took a deep breath. Then he walked the bird to its perch, whispering and petting him all the while. Once the falcon was settled he turned to look at them, his face wild with something, and slowly pulled off the glove. The hand that emerged flexed once, then tightened into a fist.
"Rose is found," he said.
Abruptly the room fell so quiet they could hear the bubble of sap from a pine log in the hearth. Furtively, the men sought one another's eyes. Ott noticed the glances and raised his voice nearly to a shout.
"Do you hear? Nilus Rotheby Rose is found! In Sorrophran, fresh from the Narrow Sea, and he'll be here at the helm of Chathrand in four days' time. Open that wine, somebody, and let us drink to good fortune. At long last the game is begun!"
The men looked at the bottle of wine and did not move. One of them picked up the corkscrew from the table, unfolded it and glanced uncertainly at his fellows. Sandor Ott walked to the center of the room.
"It's the best of news, eh, lads? The start of your golden time. Just think: a year from now His Supremacy will count you all Defenders of the Realm. And centuries hence your family names will still be praised in song. You work in secrecy today, but your grandchildren will know that they are descended from the men who saved the Empire. More than heroes, you shall-Zirfet Salubrastin!"
At the sound of his name a very big man, easily the strongest in the room, gave a startled jump.
"Why are you looking at the door, you straw-gutted mule?"
<
br /> "I never did, sir!" blurted Zirfet. He stood rooted to the spot, his enormous frame turned slightly in the direction of the tower door. Ott crossed the room to face him. The top of the old man's head was little higher than Zirfet's elbow.
"You had a mind to slip away," said Ott, very low.
"No, sir!" exploded Zirfet.
Ott held Zirfet's gaze without moving. Then, in a smooth gesture, he unsheathed a long white knife.
"You were scheming, Zirfet," he said. "An illness, a broken leg, your dear ma dying in Hubboxum. Any story, so long as it kept you off that ship."
"You're wrong! I never-not for one minute-"
Ott slid the naked blade through Zirfet's own belt, then withdrew his hand.
"Master Ott!" Now Zirfet's great shoulders were quaking. "I don't want your knife, sir! I don't!"
"You've got the only blade in the room, lad. And I'm calling you a coward. A reeking, swill-blooded coward. You'll want to challenge me, Zirfet. It's your right."
With contemptuous slowness, the old man turned his back on the younger spy and cast a cold glance at the other five.
"Men of the Secret Fist. Which of you could stand before his father and not hang his head? By the Night Gods! I watched them leap onto burning ships. I watched them charge up ladders through the boiling pitch, into the very teeth of the Mzithrin horde. Murder in their eyes, blood to their elbows. And look at their progeny. A few years of peace and you turn into dolls. Straw dolls, scarecrows, cowards! Rin spare me, you're like old Quimby, Her Highness' pet. White flabby sows, too fond of your slops to bother with the oath you swore at the Ametrine Throne, or even to defend your own rancid, maggot-mounded, offal-heap honor! Pelech!"
The last word was in Old Arquali, a ritual battle-cry to be flung at an enemy, and with it the old man twisted sideways, out of the path of Zirfet's lunge. The knife missed his back by an inch, but Ott did not escape unharmed: Zirfet's huge left fist caught him squarely in the eye. The old man flung himself with the blow, rolled over the little table with the candles and the sea chart. The other men retreated to the walls. No stopping a fight the spymaster himself had provoked.
Zirfet leaped for Ott again, snarling, all hesitation gone. But Ott was quicker. His fall from the table carried back into a roll, and as he gained his feet, still spinning, he caught the table by one leg and whirled it with terrific speed. His first pass checked Zirfet's advance, his second caught the knife in mid-stab and tore it from the other's hand.
To the watching spies, the rest of the fight seemed pitifully one-sided. Zirfet rushed Ott like an elephant, Ott leaped back and let him slip on the wine. Zirfet had learned enough from his old teacher to use the fall rather than struggle against it, and sprang to his feet again with something approaching grace. But then he took another hopeless swing at Ott. The spymaster parried it easily with his knee, and at the same time broke the second wine bottle over Zirfet's head. Even as he fell, Zirfet managed to lash out with his fist. Ott merely danced backward, absorbing the blow, and seizing the big man's wrist in one hand. The blow had stretched Zirfet out, and almost at his ease the spymaster kicked him in the stomach, leaped on his back, and pressed the jagged stem of the bottle to his throat.
All was still. Sandor Ott grinned hideously, one eye blind with blood from Zirfet's first blow. He pulled the other's head up by the hair.
"You're a coward, are you not?"
"No, sir."
"A coward, I say. A leech from a pigsty pool, like all the men of your line."
"I'll kill you, sir."
"What?"
"I swear I'll see you dead if you insult me more. I'm no coward, sir!"
A quiet sound reached the ears of the spies, and it was a moment before they recognized it as laughter. Ott's shoulders shook. He threw the bottle aside and leaped off Zirfet, who bucked himself unsteadily to his feet. Watching him, Ott laughed louder.
"If you'd answered yes I'd have believed it, lad. You'd be dead on this floor with your throat slit."
"Well I know it, Master," said Zirfet, wheezing.
"This knife," said Sandor Ott, tugging it from the table, "was placed in my hand by my first general, after I slew the Mzithrin Lord Tiamek on the Ega Bridge. Will you take it, Zirfet Salubrastin, as token of your honor defended?"
For the second time, Zirfet froze. Then he staggered forward, eyes wide with astonishment, and took the knife from his master's hand. Eyes met around the room; there were nods of grim approval.
The spymaster plucked the chart from the floor. Wine had ruined it: the western lands seemed to vanish in a sea of blood.
"Now hear me once and forever," said Ott. "There'll be no glancing at doors, for there are no doors to escape by. Not for you six, nor for me, nor even for His Supremacy. Rose will captain that ship, and we shall sail with her. The game's begun, lads. We'll play it to the last round."
Carriage
1 Vaqrin 941
7:40 a.m.
Captain Nilus Rotheby Rose felt the cat nuzzle his leg and repressed an urge to lash out. A good kick would remind the animal to keep its distance. He knew better, of course. The big red cat, Sniraga, was Lady Oggosk's darling. With luck the beast would remember his great aversion to being touched, without need of a blow that could cost him the hag's services. They had sailed together before, these three.
The carriage lumped along uphill. He sat with his big arms folded against his beard, watching the hag smoke. A new pipe. Clenched in drier lips. Lost in deeper wrinkles. But the milk-blue eyes with their predatory gaze were unchanged, and he thought: She'll be sizing me up the same. Best note these eyes, too, you deadly old crone.
"So," he said, "they nabbed you in Besq."
"Fah."
"Beg your pardon," said Rose. "They wooed you, perhaps? Called you Duchess? Handed you a card in silver writ?"
The old woman rubbed her nose vigorously. Repulsed, the captain turned to the window.
"Why are we going uphill?" he demanded. "Why aren't we making for the port?"
"Because there's a crowd like a Ballytween Fair about your vessel," muttered Oggosk. "And we've two more to pick up."
"Two? The mayor spoke of just one-that preening doctor."
Oggosk snorted. "The mayor of Sorrophran is the Emperor's bootshine-boy-nay, the rag itself. But His Supremacy doesn't own the Chathrand. If he hires the Great Ship, he does so at the pleasure of the Chathrand Trading Family. There will never be a crew aboard her but meets with the Family's blessing."
"Don't lecture me, Oggosk," said Rose, his voice a warning rumble. "I've commanded her. Farther and better than any man alive."
"Then you'll recall Lady Lapadolma's most irritating habit."
"Reciting that foul verse?"
"Stocking the crew!" snapped Oggosk. "Intruding on your rights as captain! Every voyage she afflicts us with one or two, her personal tattlers. No other Family presumes so much."
Rose grunted. Lady Lapadolma Yelig was the ruling grandmother of the Trading Family that had owned and outfitted the Chathrand for twelve generations. She was the Emperor's own cousin, but showed no better than a formal loyalty to the Ametrine Throne. Her family had always married power, both within the Imperium and without: Lapadolma herself was the widow of the Bishwa Egalguk, monarch of the Isle of Fulne.
The Yeligs owned dozens of ships, but the Chathrand was their great glory. No other vessel could carry a third what she did on a trading voyage, nor earn a third the gold. And no other Family managed, under the very nose of the Emperor, to keep so much of that gold for itself. The culprit was tradition: to the Emperor's long fury, a belief held that the day Chathrand left port in the hands of another owner would be the day she sank. Nonsense, probably. But not even His Supremacy could risk disaster on such a monstrous scale.
Of course tradition-and nearly everything else-was about to change…
From her cloud of rancid smoke, the old woman chuckled. "Nabbed!" she said. "If there's anyone nabbed it was you, Captain."
Rose shot her a dark look. The cat purred against his leg.
"You didn't want this commission," she said flatly. "You didn't want another turn behind the wheel of the Chathrand. Why not, when they pay you so handsomely?"
"I was bespoken."
"Only by a wish to hide. You led the Emperor on a yearlong chase, island to island, port to port. And you almost escaped-"
"Still a blary witch." Rose glared at her. "Still a trickster and a spy."
"You almost escaped," Oggosk repeated. "The Flikkermen caught you last night, with a ticket for an inland coach. Inland! Why, Captain, that'd be the first time in your life!"
"Oggosk," he growled, "be silent."
Her eyes remained fixed on him. "A secret commission, too. Sorrophran is like a hive of ants, everyone knowing the captain will be named this morning, everyone guessing wrong. Above all they wonder why Chathrand spent three months in this kennel of a town, and not mighty Etherhorde across the bay. Will you tell them, Captain Rose? Will you tell how certain powerful men in the capital might have grown suspicious at, say, the twelve months' provisions being laid in our hold, for a voyage of three? It would be difficult to explain-above all to the Yeligs. Suppose you gave them the truth: that His Supremacy's astrologers have convinced old Magad that this is the hour of his destiny, the moment that will see him crushed-or raised above all princes that ever were or will be. Naya, has it ever been different? A man will leap into a furnace if you tell him it's the way to power over others. It's a madness and a wonder that we let you rule. But the greatest wonder is the threat."
Rose's head jerked up, and Oggosk cackled.
"Ehe! The threat! What did they use on you, Captain? What drives Nilus Rotheby Rose to set sail when he hasn't the mind?"
Captain Rose's face was scarlet, but his voice when it came was low and venomous. "You will recall, Lady Oggosk, that we shall soon be weighing anchor. And you will recall further how very few compulsions indeed this captain tolerates at sea."
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