by David Drake
That seemed scarcely necessary; Rincip was terrified, both of what had happened and of what he feared would be next. He looked ready to offer his mother’s soul if his captors demanded it. But Chalcus wasn’t a man to take unnecessary chances, probably because his life had involved so many risks that he hadn’t been able to avoid.
Pointin had gotten out of the hold, for the first time since the Bird of the Tide came in sight of Terness Harbor after his rescue the night before. He sat against the starboard gunwale and stared at the captive Sea Guard. His face showed no emotion, no expression at all.
“So, Master Rincip...,” Chalcus said. He sat cross-legged facing the captive. As he spoke, he stropped his curved dagger on the ball of his callused foot. “I’ve some questions for you. If you answer them promptly and honestly, we’ll put you into your skiff and you can wait for your friends to pick you up when they come chasing us... as they surely will and as surely will fail, for in the hours it takes the Commander to get a crew together, I’ll have the Bird across shoals where your Defender can’t follow without ripping her bottom out.”
“You’re lying,” Rincip whispered through dry lips. “You’ll kill me whatever I do.”
Despite the words, Ilna thought she heard hope in the Sea Guard’s tone. Until Chalcus made the offer, Rincip hadn’t even imagined that he might survive this night.
Chalcus laughed merrily. “I’ve killed too many men to count, my friend,” he said. “Men, and it might be women and children too; I was a hard fellow when I was younger. I don’t need to add to the number, though it won’t bother me greatly if that happens. Regardless, we’re towing your little boat behind us, which we would not do except I’m willing to set you free on it.”
“Ship your oars and raise sail!” Hutena shouted. The four rowers lifted the sweeps from the oarlocks and pulled them aboard.
Ilna glanced over her shoulder. The castle’s watchtower was now below the horizon, but she’d seen it a few minutes earlier when she last looked. She didn’t doubt that it’d take at least an hour before Lusius could muster enough of a crew to take the patrol vessel out, but that didn’t matter. Everybody aboard the Bird of the Tide knew that Lusius would choose wizardry rather than swords to solve this problem. That way it couldn’t be traced back to him.
“If you don’t talk willingly,” Chalcus continued in the same playfully cheerful tone, “Mistress Ilna here will weave you a pattern that brings the words out regardless. Then too you’ll go over the side; but bound as you are and without the skiff. You may be floating when your friends arrive; but you won’t, I think, be in any different state than if I’d slit your throat to give you a quick end... which I will not.”
“What do you want to know?” Rincip asked in a guarded, hopeful tone. “I’m not... I mean, the Commander plays things pretty close. I don’t know much.”
“But you know that Lusius is behind the attacks on shipping, do you not?” Chalcus said. “The Queen of Heaven and others before her, a dozen ships or so?”
“Yeah, he must be,” Rincip said. “Admitted” would’ve been the wrong word to use since the Commander’s deputy was so determinedly separating himself from the business. “He knows to take us out in the barges before anything happens. But it’s that demon Gaur who does it and I don’t know how. He stays back in the castle, down in his rooms where the dungeons were. I’m not sure even Lusius knows what Gaur does.”
Nabarbi loosed a line; the sail slatted down. Ninon and Shausga drew it taut by adjusting the footropes. Ilna hadn’t noticed enough change in the breeze to justify switching to sail now, but she wasn’t a sailor and these men certainly were. Sure enough, the Bird continued on its way; as fast or perhaps a trifle faster than the oars had driven it.
Rincip licked his lips and glanced longingly at the skin of wine which the crewmen were passing around now that their hands were free of the oars. Ilna said, her voice harsher than she’d expected, “We said we’d spare your life. We didn’t say that we’d treat you as a friend. Tell us about the attacks!”
“All right, all right,” Rincip muttered. “It’s always the same. Lusius knows where to go. We wait; the sea’s empty, there’s nothing there, and then there’s a flash and the ship is on the sea rocking and stinking of sulphur. Always the same.”
He closed his eyes, moving his head side to side as if he was trying to clear something from it. “I try not to look when I know the light is going to come, but it doesn’t help,” he said. “It comes right through you. You see it in your brain even if your eyes’re covered.”
“And when the ship appears...,” said Chalcus mildly, ignoring Rincip’s trembling terror. “Do you board and slay the crew?”
The captive laughed harshly. “There’s no crew!” he said. “There’s nobody, not a soul alive ever till that one there—”
He jerked his chin toward Pointin since his hands were tied behind him.
“—hid in the iron chest just now. There’s parts of bodies, torn parts and chewed like shrews that a cat brings back. We throw them in the sea to Our Brother, but it’s not us who kills them.”
“You’ve been training the seawolf for the whole time, then?” Chalcus said with a broad, hard smile. “A clever man, our Lusius.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” said Rincip. “Did you think it was chance the beast is named Our Brother?”
“Go on,” said Chalcus; still smiling, his right index finger playing with the eared pommel of his inward-curving sword.
“Lusius and his twin Ausius bribed Lascarg to send him here as Commander of the Strait,” Rincip explained. “They were as much a pair as your two hands are. The first night Ausius fell into the sea and a seawolf ate him before we could get a line over to draw him up. Ever since then the seawolf’s followed whenever Lusius puts out, in the Defender or the barges either one. And Lusius never goes aboard one of the fishing boats, because Our Brother is big enough to capsize them... and he thinks that’s what he’d do.”
“Did Lusius throw his brother to the beast?” Ilna said. “Stab him and throw the body in?”
Rincip shrugged. “It was night,” he said. “They were in the far bow of the Defender. Lusius says his brother leaned over holding a stay to look at the seawolf and his hand slipped. Maybe that’s what happened.”
He scrunched up; if his hands had been free, he’d have been covering his eyes with them, Ilna was sure. He said, “I wish I’d never got into this. We’re all afraid, we’d all like to quit. I think the Commander’s as scared as the rest of us, but what can we do?”
“You can get very rich, I’m thinking,” said Chalcus pleasantly. “From the shell alone, a tidy sum; and with what comes out of the bellies of the ships you loot—richer yet. I know better than most how quickly that gold flows away, but having it means a fine time while it lasts.”
“You don’t know,” Rincip said, shaking his head miserably. “Sure, I’ve seen bodies before, but just pieces, always pieces.... And I kept thinking, what if it gets loose? What if it comes after me?”
“What ‘it’?” Ilna said. “What’s the thing that does the killing?”
“I don’t know,” Rincip said, his voice rising. “I don’t know, I don’t want ever to know. But I’m afraid!”
Which surely was the truth, given that where he was now didn’t frighten him as much as Gaur’s monster did. If the thing was Gaur’s at all....
“What do you think, dear one?” Chalcus asked her.
Ilna pursed her lips but it was a moment before she decided how to speak. At last she said, “He’s telling the truth, surely, but I don’t see that he’s any further use to us. Except as a witness, I suppose, but you said we’d let him go.”
Chalcus grinned and pulled his dagger from his sash. “So I did,” he said. He reached out; Rincip flinched as far away as the cords twisted from his own silk tunic allowed, but Chalcus slipped the dagger behind him.
The bonds parted; Rincip sprawled on the deck, dragging tags of severed cord. Cha
lcus had cut him loose without seeing the knots or touching the prisoner’s skin.
He sheathed his dagger and grinned at Ilna. She grinned back. His was a personality very different from hers, but he showed an equal attention to craftsmanship.
“Get in your skiff, Master Rincip,” Chalcus said, gesturing toward the painter tied to a stern bitt. “Go over the side and I’ll cast you off. There’s oars in the boat, but you may as well wait for the Commander to come by.”
“It wouldn’t bother me to knock him in the head first,” said Hutena, speaking for the first time as his hands gripped the tiller fiercely. He glared at the man who’d talked so casually about aiding in the slaughter of hundreds of sailors much like Hutena himself.
“Nor would it bother me, bosun,” Chalcus said with a merry laugh, “but we’ll not do that, not just now.”
He gestured to the cowering Rincip with the finger that a moment before had been playing with his swordhilt. “Get over the side, my man,” he said. “I won’t make the offer a third time.”
Scrambling and looking back toward Hutena, Rincip tripped over the low railing. He bellowed with shock and fear in the moment he splashed into the water. He must have caught the painter, though, for it jerked violently.
Chalcus cut the skiff loose with a single swift motion of his sword. He sheathed the weapon and said, to Hutena and perhaps to more than the few souls aboard the Bird of the Tide, “If every man were hanged who deserved it, friend bosun, I greatly fear that you’d be serving a different captain now.”
“You’re not like Rincip, captain,” Hutena growled. “He’s not a man, he’s a jackal without the balls to kill for himself. But I guess we can leave him for others if you say so.”
Chalcus looked back over the stern, his lips in a hard, bright smile. Ilna followed his gaze; the skiff was almost lost in the slow swells in the Bird’s wake.
“They’ll be following in the Defender,” Chalcus said musingly. “The barges ’ll still be loaded with what they took from the Queen of Heaven. And they know the Defender can’t catch us before we make the shoals where she can’t follow....”
“I just want to get away,” said Pointin, staring at the deck between his knees. “I don’t care where. Just away!”
There was a cyan flicker in the night sky. If Ilna hadn’t known what it really was, she might have guessed it was heat lightning.
“And so we shall, I do hope,” said Chalcus. “But first we’ll make a detour to a place Master Gaur wishes us to see.”
“Captain?” called Kulit from the bow. The sailor’s face was carefully composed to hide the fear inside. All the men held weapons, but they clearly shared Ilna’s doubt as to how useful that would be.
“Aye, lads,” said Chalcus. “It’s now that we earn our pay, I’m thinking.”
Azure wizardlight flared again, this time as a continuous solid bowl pulsing across the sky directly above the Bird of the Tide. It pulsed, and Ilna felt herself falling though nothing around her changed.
For a moment she heard Pointin’s terrified screams. Then the roar of wizardry overwhelmed every other sound.
Chapter 17
The mechanical birds trilled tunes as golden as their own flashing wings. That was the only soothing thing going on in the audience room this morning.
Garric sat grim-faced at the head of the conference table. Lord Tadai, Lord Waldron, and Master Reise (‘representing the Vicar’) were arguing over the size, make-up, siting, and especially the funding of the garrison which would remain in Haft when the royal army accompanied Prince Garric to Sandrakkan, the next stage of his progress. The army commander was heated, the acting chancellor was suave, the former palace servant was self-effacing—and none of the three of them would move a hair’s breadth from his initial mutually-exclusive position.
“There’s no perfect decision!” Carus said. Garric was dizzy with silent frustration but the ancient king was in a livid rage. “You should just do it, do anything, and be done!”
Before Garric could make any response beyond the first twitch of a smile, Carus realized what he’d said and guffawed loudly. “Aye, lad,” he said. “You should decide by throwing knucklebones and let the kingdom go smash. The way I did, because I wouldn’t spend time on anything that didn’t involve a sword.”
Each of the principals had several aides carrying document cases. A staff captain and one of Tadai’s section heads, both junior members of the Ornifal nobility, snarled at one another beside the silver birdcage; if they’d been allowed to carry swords in the presence of the prince, they’d have been using them. The pair of Blood Eagles on duty watched with superior smiles.
Liane sat demurely beside Garric with a waxed notepad in her hand and a rank of part-opened scrolls laid on the table before her. To look at her she was wholly focused on her documents, oblivious of the discussion going on. Garric was quite sure that if asked, Liane could repeat verbatim any portion of the argument and counter-arguments; which was more than he could do, and he’d been trying to follow it.
The door opened. A guard outside whispered to one inside, then a nondescript man entered. He walked around the room against the wall to Liane, then stooped and whispered to her lowered head. Garric smiled again. He didn’t know the details—yet—but he knew that if the fellow’d been allowed in now, something more important than a council meeting was about to occur.
Liane nodded to the messenger—one of her spies, obviously—and stood expectantly. Nobody but Garric paid any attention.
Garric stood also and slapped the table. Everyone jumped; Lord Waldron reached reflexively for the hilt of the sword which he wasn’t wearing.
“Gentlemen,” said Garric. His tone and expression were stiff, just short of angry. “Lady Liane has an announcement.”
“An emergency requiring Prince Garric’s presence with troops has arisen at the Shrine of the Sister,” Liane said. As she spoke, she set her scrolls back each into its place in her travelling desk, then closed the inlaid lid over the cavity.
“Right,” said Waldron, no longer angry. To an aide he went on, “Alert Lord Tosli. We’ll take the whole palace regiment, so go next to the camp and tell Lord Mayne or whoever’s on duty in his headquarters to bring his regiment at once to replace Tosli’s men.”
“But about the point we’re discussing...?” said Tadai.
“For the time being...,” Garric said. “That is, until I give different orders, Lord Insto’s regiment—” which had the highest number of sickness-related casualties; they’d suffered badly on the voyage from Valles and hadn’t recovered yet “—will be billeted on the northern arm of the harbor—” which the troops could easily fortify with a short wall across the base of the peninsula before they had time to build a proper fort. “They’ll cause less irritation to ordinary citizens there than if they were living in the middle of the city. They’ll be concentrated, but they can deploy either by land or sea to wherever they’re needed.”
Reise nodded; Waldron shrugged, impatient to get moving. Garric knew from Liane’s phrasing that this wasn’t an emergency in which seconds counted, so he could use the summons as a way to finish a discussion that would go on for many further hours if merely adjourned.
“But the source of the regiment’s pay hasn’t been decided,” Tadai said. “I—”
“If I may?” Liane said sharply, looking toward Garric. She reopened her notebook but didn’t glance down at it.
“Speak,” said Garric, curtly formal.
“Two-thirds of the regiment’s pay might come from the Vicar’s revenues,” Liane said, “with the remainder from the royal treasury in acknowledgment of your right to withdraw the troops without notice should the need arise.”
“Done,” said Garric. “Lord Tadai, prepare the decree for my signature. Lord Insto will be under the command of the Vicar until and unless I recall the regiment to the royal army.”
“I don’t like the idea of my legates taking orders from civilians, your highness!” Waldron said
, frozen in the middle of his stride toward the door.
“My legates, if you please, Lord Waldron,” Garric said coldly. “And I prefer that system to having two competing authorities in one jurisdiction.”
He broke the chill rebuff with a smile. “Since the Vicar, Lord Uzinga, is your wife’s nephew and the man you recommended for the post, Waldron, I think you ought to be able to work things out. Now, let’s get moving.”
“Well, but there’s the principle...,” Waldron was muttering as he and Garric stepped into the hall together. It was a silly enough comment that the old warrior choked off the rest of the thought before he embarrassed himself further.
His aides and Garric’s—Lord Lerdain was carrying Liane’s travelling desk; from what Garric could tell the youth was besotted with Liane, but he was too much in awe of her to get himself into trouble by saying the wrong thing—were right behind them. The rest of the guard detachment formed around them in the hallway. The captain on duty handed Waldron his sword; during military operations the rules changed, even for the Blood Eagles.
The door slammed, leaving Reise and Tadai behind to wrestle with the problem of converting Garric’s decision into the legally appropriate arrangement of words. The whole entourage started down the corridor in an echoing crash of hobnailed boots and jangling armor.
“Your highness!” Liane said, shouting to be heard.
“Eh?” said Garric, gesturing her forward into the space between him and Lord Waldron. “What is it that’s going on at the Shrine of the Sister?”
“Nothing, your highness,” Liane said, not quite so shrilly as before. “I want to call on the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock, but I didn’t want to say that in the room with the mechanical birds in it.”
“The birds?” Garric said, frowning. “The present from the priests of the Shepherd, you mean?”
