The House of the Four Winds: Book One of One Dozen Daughters

by Mercedes Lackey

  Clarice checked her watch. Almost midnight. She ought to have heard something by now.

  She wondered where Dominick was, and what he was doing to keep Shamal’s attention from drifting elsewhere. Then she forced herself to stop wondering.

  There must be something …

  There was.

  She must go with them.

  She didn’t want to; Kayin had known that without asking. But of everyone aboard Asesino, she was the only one who might walk into the Governor’s Palace on Cibola and demand an audience by right of rank and birth. Any thaumaturge could set the spell on her that would prove her words were true. And the governor of Cibola might not believe Kayin Dako, able seaman, but he would certainly believe Princess Clarice of Swansgaarde.

  Dominick’s life for the lives of all who might fall prey to the House of the Four Winds? The choice was not easy, but it was clear-cut. She shrugged into her coat and picked up her hat. When she opened the door, the corridor was dimly lit and silent. She held her breath, listening for a long moment before stepping out, even though it felt wrong to skulk around the ship as though she were a sneak thief. The weeks she had spent living in this small wooden world had made Asesino feel like home. Shamal’s presence felt like a usurpation. If that is so, why, then I am an agent of the Crown in exile, Clarice told herself, surprised she could make even such a small joke at a time like this. And together, we shall cast off the usurper and restore rightful rule.

  As she reached the door that led to the deck, she heard the first faint creak of pulleys.

  “Gently, lads,” she heard Kayin whisper. “Slow and easy.”

  Carefully she pushed open the quarterdeck gangway hatch and stepped out into the night. The lanterns that should have been burning forward and amidships were dark. The only light came from the lantern portside amidships. Another long creak, as the men gathered there pulled on the ropes, and the jolly boat began to rise from the deck.

  Clarice moved to the side, carefully closing the hatch behind her. Another creak of the winch. Another cautious step forward.

  Another step.

  And then the sound of footsteps behind her, booming loud over the deck. Clarice heard the door rattle as it opened and turned back to see the monstrous bulk of Gregale—a looming shadow against the stars—step out onto the deck.

  Then suddenly, there was light.

  Branches of violet fire danced among the ship’s masts, leaping from mast to spar to yardarm. The wood itself took on a strange illumination, glowing softly as if it were tainted with fox fire. The men clustered by the jolly boat scattered. Some dropped to their knees and began to pray. In the light, Clarice could see that the bottom of the boat stood level with the rail. They had been so close to escape.…

  Shamal walked out on deck.

  Tonight she was dressed like an evil queen from a fairy tale. Her hair was pulled high, to form a hennin made of a hundred interwoven braids from which unbraided hair hung like the fabric of a veil. She was dressed from throat to ankles in velvet blacker than the shadows. Only her face and hands showed, darkly lambent against that sable backdrop.

  Behind her came Dominick. He wore neither vest nor coat, and his shirt was open. In the light of the witch fire, the spell necklace was a dark line against his chest.

  “I have given none of you leave to depart,” Shamal said. “Where were you going?”

  No one answered.

  “You know of this?” She turned her head slightly as she spoke to Dominick.

  “I told them to go,” he grated out against his will.

  “Where?” she demanded.

  “Cibola. Anywhere they could reach.”

  “And so you hope to thwart my desire? Foolish boy. No one may leave this ship without my permission.”

  She reached up to lift a string of beads from about her throat. Clarice flinched, but Shamal merely tossed it to the deck. The beads seemed to melt as if they were made of ice, not stone, and in the moment they vanished, the wood seemed to … ripple … as if the ship lay underwater and Shamal had cast a stone into that water. She has enchanted all of Asesino, Clarice realized. But to what purpose?

  “But I can be merciful. I give you all leave to go. I will hold no one against his will. Go ahead,” Shamal said to the men still huddled against the rail. “Lower your boat. Row for your freedom—if you dare.”

  “No!” Dominick stepped between Shamal and the men at the rail. “What will happen?”

  “Why, they will die!” Shamal crowed delightedly. “But they may try it if they choose. Gregale, assist them to lower the boat, if you please.”

  Gregale took a step forward. Half a dozen sailors scrambled into the boat and began desperately sawing at the ropes with their knives.

  “No!” Dominick cried. He ran toward them. Gregale halted and grabbed him as more men clambered into the wildly rocking boat. “Kayin!” Dominick shouted. “Don’t go!”

  Kayin stopped, one hand on the lip of the boat, then stepped away from it, his face agonized.

  The ropes tore apart and the boat tipped sideways, spilling its passengers into the sea before it fell. As it did, Gregale released Dominick. He and Kayin rushed to the rail.

  Clarice reached them as Kayin reeled backward with a cry of horror.

  “Don’t look!” Dominick cried, but it was too late. She’d already seen.

  The boat floated hull up in the midst of the sailors. Instead of trying to right it, they thrashed frantically in the water. Some clawed at their throats. Some flailed desperately to reach the side of the ship, mouths gaping as they struggled to breathe. Asesino moved slowly away as the men who had tried to leave her drowned in air.

  “What are you doing?” Clarice demanded, turning on Shamal. “Why are you doing it? Weren’t there enough victims on Dorado for you to amuse yourself with? This is madness! What can you possibly want that you do not have already?” Clarice was so furious, so heartsick, that she had gone beyond fear. The magnitude of Shamal’s evil made any thought of self-preservation impossible. Dominick clawed at her arm as she stepped forward, and Gregale moved to place himself between her and Shamal.

  And Shamal … laughed. “Power, my pretty little princess! Power! And you’re going to get it for me—you, and your chaste and faithful Dominick!”

  “But—” Dominick’s hand dropped from Clarice’s shoulder. He stared at her in confusion.

  “You did not know!” Shamal crowed delightedly. “How could you not know? Look at her! She plays the beardless boy well enough—but this is no boy!”

  Clarice dared not look toward Dominick. This is not how I meant you to find out! a part of her mourned. But she stepped away from Dominick, toward Shamal, and knew that her face showed nothing of what she felt.

  “I am Clarice Eugenie Victoria Amalthea Melusine of Swansgaarde. What do you want of me?” she asked, proud that her voice was steady. “I am not the heir. My blood has no power.”

  “You are wrong, little princess. Your blood has power enough to unlock the gate behind which lies my treasure. Yours—and his. I have waited long for such as you to fall into my hands,” Shamal answered gloatingly.

  “Mine? My … blood?” Dominick stammered. “But he—she—?”

  Now Clarice could let herself turn and look at him. The fox fire still coruscated over the masts; in its light she could see his face was stunned to blankness.

  Shamal swaggered forward. “I have told you only the truth each time I spoke,” she purred. “That is the price I pay for my power—but there is never any need to tell all I know. And yet, for it amuses me to do so, I shall tell you now. I have said I seek the Heart of Light, and this is truth. You think my power alone would be enough to gain it—do you think I have not seen the suspicion on your faces and heard you whisper in secret? Such a powerful sorceress, you tell yourselves, may have anything she wants for the conjuring. But not this, for the Heart of Light is power absolute. Such treasures go only to the bold and the resolute, and so it is guarded by traps and
riddles that have taken me long to solve. And see? I shall tell you all I have learned, and you need not even ask. Here is the secret to gaining the Heart of Light. A virgin, brave, righteous, and steadfast, can see through the illusions that guard the way to where it lies. And royal blood can lift it from its resting place.”

  It was obvious, from Shamal’s gestures, which of them was royal, and which was … steadfast.

  “The princess was instantly in my power, though she did not know it,” Shamal said. “She could not depart Dorado without my leave. She was nothing.”

  Thank you for that, Clarice thought mulishly.

  “But you? A rarer prize. A ship’s navigator with the qualities I sought. Any stainless innocent would see through the Heart of Light’s illusions. A child, for example. But I discovered—at great cost—that to see through the illusion was not the same matter as sailing a ship through it. And a ship I must have to reach it. You were a gift from the Gods, my darling. And so I made sure of your virtue. Why do you think I spent so many boring hours in your company? And yet you remained … incorruptible. Perfect.”

  It all made a terrible sort of sense, Clarice realized. Virtue was not enough. It must be virtue coupled with seamanship—something she doubted was often seen on Dorado. No wonder the Brotherhood brought the crews of their prizes back to Dorado. It was so Shamal could sort through them in search of the one who could take her to her treasure.

  And they’d sailed Asesino right to her.

  “I’m sure we’re both very grateful for your interest,” Clarice said into the silence that followed Shamal’s last words. “But I have absolutely no intention of assisting you. And neither will Dominick.”

  “Dominick will do as I bid him to,” Shamal said with a feral smirk. “I need his skill and his cooperation, but I have ensured that I have both. As for you, I hardly need your acceptance. Nor do I need your presence. A few days among the rats will cool your tongue.”

  * * *

  The air was musty and stank of salt and tar and less pleasant things. Despite the stifling closeness, it was cold. Chill, rather. Chill and damp. Clarice was acutely conscious that ocean was only a few inches away, on the other side of some wooden planks that suddenly seemed far too insubstantial to hold it at bay.

  She closed her eyes tightly and forced herself to do more than simply sit and gibber—though she thought that was an entirely sensible reaction to her situation. Gregale had placed heavy manacles on her ankles and wrists, and another length of chain about her waist, and then around her a length of the rope that filled the orlop. She was not only thoroughly imprisoned, she was weighted down by so many chains she could barely move.

  She could not think of anything she could have done differently. Or if she had, that it would have made much of a difference.

  She might never have taken passage on Asesino at all. Never met Dominick. Never fallen in love. She could be in Cibola at this very moment. But that would be an accident of circumstance, not a response to danger.

  If she’d somehow found some way to stop the mutiny, Samuel Sprunt would have sailed them into Dorado, and she and Dominick would still be in Shamal’s hands.

  If she’d told the crew immediately about the spell Shamal had cast over Dominick, they might have tried to make a run for it. Asesino would have foundered on the harbor chain if they’d tried to sail to freedom, and she doubted it was possible to hide on Dorado.

  She could have taken a musket and shot Shamal the moment they were clear of the harbor. Or jumped overboard. Or rather, she could have tried to do either of those things and likely have been thwarted by Shamal’s magic or Gregale, or both.

  And now I will die, and Dominick will die, and Kayin, and Dickon, and everyone aboard Asesino, and Shamal will gain the Heart of Light, and I do not know what it is or what she means to do with it, but I suspect it will make her career as a pirate queen seem harmless and wholesome. And there is nothing at all I can see to do about any of this. I cannot free myself. And I cannot free Dominick.…

  She did not know how long she sat alone in the dark. Long enough to have to lecture herself sternly that nobody died of thirst in a few hours, and that even if she did, it would probably be a good thing, under the circumstances.

  There was a light.

  At first it seemed like some trick played on eyes weary of staring sightlessly into the darkness. But it grew stronger, until she could make out the dim shape of the ship’s ladder, and she could finally see, dimly, the vast coils of hempen cable that filled the whole of this cramped and fetid space.

  It occurred belatedly to Clarice that anyone who was brave and clever enough—and who had overheard Shamal’s speech—would know that the easiest way to thwart Shamal’s plans was to come down here and end Clarice’s life.

  “Hello,” Dominick said in a low voice. “Don’t be afraid. It’s only me.”

  He held a lantern in one hand and a bundle in the other as he picked his way carefully over the rope cables.

  “Dominick!” Clarice said as soon as she did not need to raise her voice for him to hear her. “What are you doing down here? If Shamal finds out—”

  “Nothing will happen. She needs me to get where we’re going. And since she hasn’t forbidden me to come … here I am.”

  He set the lantern on the deck and knelt down beside Clarice. The bundle in his arms contained several blankets, a flask of water, a bottle of brandy, and food. “I thought you might—”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “I kept trying to tell you. Ever since…” Ever since she told you what would break the spell.

  “I, ah … I suppose it’s for the best. That you … aren’t a boy, I mean.” There was another, longer awkward pause. “I … I’m glad you aren’t a boy.”

  Despite the danger, the horror, the utterly terrible ridiculousness of the situation, Clarice felt like laughing. “Thank you,” she said gravely. “I’m glad I’m not a boy, too.”

  “Are you really a princess?” Dominick burst out nervously. “Oh, of course you are, I’m an idiot. You wouldn’t be chained up down here if you weren’t. And then there was that brooch you showed me.…” Another awkward pause. “Gregale has the keys; I can’t get them. I’m sorry. But do I call you Your Highness or Your Grace or—”

  “Call me Clarice. It’s my name. Or Clarence, if you prefer. I have gotten used to it, you know.”

  “But you’re a princess!” Dominick said insistently, and Clarice’s heart sank a little. When he said “princess,” Clarice knew he was thinking of a princess like Queen Gloriana’s daughter, Isabet, someone born to rule an empire.

  “I’m not much of a princess,” Clarice said hopefully. “Swansgaarde is a tiny little duchy that isn’t even on most maps. Even the whole of the Borogynian Principalities aren’t on them. I know. I’ve looked.”

  “But you were born in a castle! And I am only—”

  “A member of an important merchant family,” Clarice said firmly. “Or you would have been if Barnabas Bellamy hadn’t stolen your fortune. And it is a very small castle, I assure you. Scarcely rating the title of manor house by the standards you know.”

  “Very small?” Dominick asked after a long pause.

  “Almost infinitesimal. Why, for all I know, your old home was larger.”

  He reached out as if to touch her hand, then drew back. “I suppose what you told me about yourself was all … a story?” he said at last.

  “That my father was a law clerk, and the rest? Well, Papa does spend more time in court than he likes, but … that part was not true. But I ride and play chess and fence, just as I told you. Everything I told you about me is true. And I left home to seek my fortune. That part is true as well. I have eleven younger sisters, you know. I fully intended to become a swordsmaster. Mistress. Well, I hadn’t made up my mind—”

  “Eleven!” Dominick exclaimed, sounding astonished. “You must be very glad to live in a castle. Even if it is … infinite
simal.”

  “And one brother. His name is Dantan, and he will be duke after Papa—but not for many years, I hope, for he is only two! And perhaps Papa will abdicate, when he is older, and spend the rest of his life fishing, as he has always sworn he means to.…” She found herself speaking to Dominick of her family, a family not grand, like Albion royalty, or fearsome and distant, like the kings and queens of Cisleithania, but just … her family. “Anise is the next eldest. She is the thaumaturge of the family, while Talitha is more venturesome than I. It is Damaris who is the bloodthirsty one, though. She is six. Oh … she is seven now. But she would certainly make short work of this Pirate Brotherhood, if she were let.”

  “It sounds like you have a wonderful family,” Dominick answered wistfully. “I can’t imagine how you could leave them.”

  “I could not stay in Swansgaarde for the duchy cannot afford a dozen dowries, and there is no work for me there. I could not sit in a garret doing embroidery all day—even if I could do embroidery in the first place!—and I have no taste for army life, though I think Jennet does. And we have no army, in any event. Really, the one thing I am good at is swordplay.”

  “You could have married a prince. Or … a duke?”

  She laughed. “I would have had to marry into one of the other principalities to do that, and there is the matter of a dowry that I do not have. And I have known most of their young men since we were children, and if I were to marry, I … I would rather marry you, Dominick, if you were to ask me. I know I have no reason to—”

  Her heart thundered, and her cheeks felt hot. She had not meant to say it so abruptly, dropping the declaration into the middle of a conversation so much like one Clarence could have had with Dominick. But if the events of recent days had taught her anything, it was that there was no time to spend in working into things in some tactful, polite way. The people who had written those manuals of etiquette and deportment had not been under a sentence of death at the time.

  For a moment she thought he would recoil in shock. Disgust. Worst of all, he might babble some polite lies about being only able to think of her as Clarence and not Clarice, and while it was flattering of her to declare such an interest in him, he could never …