Scimitar War

by Chris A. Jackson

  Parek cheered with them, then turned to the tall woman beside him and doffed his hat. “You’ve done a beautiful job on her, Mistress Rella. My compliments to you and your crew.” He bowed and flashed a disarming smile.

  “Thank you, Captain.” Rella nodded, but her smile seemed forced, and her eyes flashed with a hint of suspicion that he’d seen smoldering there for days. This was unfortunate. If things didn’t play out in the next five minutes as he had planned, there would be blood on the dock, and it wouldn’t be his.

  Their cargo, offloaded to lighten the ship before hauling, had raised many eyebrows. Despite Parek’s assurance that their peculiar mix of finery was common for ships trading along the Sand Coast, his crew had heard whispered speculation among the shipyard workers. They would not be safe until this load of booty had been sold and then resold in Tsing, and there was no trail for an inquisitive imperial investigator to follow. Only then would he and his crew be free and rich. Of course, that depended on no unfortunate rumors following them north.

  Most of the crew had wanted to silence the shipyard workers permanently, but Parek had staved them off. Leaving a few dozen dead men, women and children behind them could cause more problems than it would solve. There was always the chance that someone might escape; if that happened, more than rumors would eventually reach the authorities. Just one live witness to murder, and they would become hunted men. He smiled again at Rella and motioned one of his men to bring forth a heavy coffer.

  “Your payment, as we agreed,” he said smoothly. “And please accept this gift as my personal thanks for your efforts.” He handed her a second box, smaller than the coffer, and intricately carved of dark mahogany.

  “That isn’t necessary, Captain,” she said, though she accepted the box grudgingly when he pressed it into her hands. “We performed a service, and have been well—” Her protests faltered and her eyes widened as she opened the box and caught sight of its contents. “Oh…my!”

  “Do you like it?” he asked as he stepped close and peered down with her. On a bed of black silk lay a sapphire necklace that he had selected from the best of Bloodwind’s treasures. Seven stones as blue as the deepest sea, the largest as big as the end of his thumb, were set in a web of silver. It was worth a fortune, and ten times that if it would buy her silence. He looked into her eyes and said, “I thought the sapphires would match your eyes, but even these gems pale in comparison.”

  Rella stared wide-eyed at him for a long moment, and her cheeks flushed pink, but then she pulled back. “Captain Torek, I cannot accept this.” She closed the lid and proffered the box. “It’s too much.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, refusing to take it back. “If you don’t want it for yourself, then sell it and distribute the money among your people. Consider it a bonus for a job well done. The Lady Belle has never looked so splendid.”

  “She is a fine ship,” Rella said, reluctantly tucking the box under her arm. “She will serve you well in the north.”

  “Actually, I was thinking of hiring a captain for her in Tsing, and seeing how I could tolerate a life on land.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’ve enough to retire in comfort. It’s not so very far away, you know. I would welcome a visit. Of course, Tsing is a large city, and you wouldn’t know how to find me. But I know how to find you, and I can come back easily enough.”

  He almost laughed at the flash of suspicion on Rella’s face before she forced a smile. “A visit would be welcome, Captain.” He could tell that she lied, and was obviously unsure if his statement was a promise or a threat. Just as he had intended.

  “Then do not be surprised if I show up on your doorstep one day. I may even contract your master to build a ship for me.” He extended his hand to her and smiled genuinely. “Thank you again, Mistress Rella.”

  “You are welcome, Captain,” she said, shaking his hand firmly. “Now, if you want to make use of the ebb tide, I believe we have some work to do.”

  “Indeed, we do!” he agreed, holding her hand just a little longer, and a little stronger, than necessary. He watched her walk down the dock, then turned to his busy crew as they reloaded all of the cargo back aboard the Lady Belle. Parek joined in with good humor. This was all going to work out just fine.

  Chapter 21

  The Devil’s Due

  Cynthia blinked and squinted, blinded by the harsh midday sun as she was escorted onto Resolute’s main deck. After more than a week in the warship’s brig, any light brighter than a low flame was dazzling. She shifted Kloe awkwardly in her arms, rattling the manacles that had been affixed to her wrists before she left her cell. Murmuring to calm him, she tucked the blanket over his head—he didn’t like the bright light any more than she did—and poked Mouse back inside. Fortunately, the sprite heeded her warning and kept quiet, huddled inside the baby’s blanket. She doubted their escort would tolerate a petulant seasprite.

  They stopped there, surrounded by marines, as a sailor knelt to clamp leg irons around her ankles, then moved to do the same to Feldrin.

  “Belay that!” an officer hissed in an exasperated tone. “You can’t put leg irons on a peg leg! Just put one on his good ankle, and attach it to his wrist manacles.”

  “Odea’s green garters, would ya look at that!”

  Feldrin’s exclamation brought her eyes up, but all she could see was blue-clad marines. Feldrin’s height gave him an advantage over her, but from the tone of his voice, Cynthia wasn’t sure she wanted to see what he saw.

  “Silence there!” the officer ordered, forestalling her question, though it didn’t stop her husband from muttering under his breath.

  “Come along now, ma’am,” said a young marine as he touched her arm to urge her forward. Finally reaching the warship’s broad gangplank, the marines parted to let them cross, and Cynthia saw what had elicited Feldrin’s outburst.

  “Odea help us,” she muttered. Her knees began to quake as she stared at the horde of people crowding the head of the pier. There were thousands of them packed shoulder to shoulder, held back by a single row of soldiers. Though of varied dress and walks of life, they all had two things in common: grim looks on their faces, and black scarves tied around their necks. In a flash of realization, she knew that these were the families and loved ones of the sailors who had perished on the Clairissa and Fire Drake. Their lives had been shattered by her failure, and she could see by their faces that they were here for their due.

  “We step off this ship, Cyn, and even Odea won’t be able to help us,” Feldrin said. Before she could reply, a voice cried out from the crowd, and their tight procession halted.

  “It’s the sea witch!”

  “Give her over!” another yelled. “We want justice!”

  “Aye! Justice!”

  “Who in the Nine Hells invited all these people?” Cynthia heard Commodore Henkle hiss to his first mate. “Lieutenant, double the guard! The prisoners are not to be harmed.”

  A cacophony of shouts, curses and muttered oaths blazed through the crowd like a brushfire, and the mass of humanity surged against the thin line of soldiers. Marines filed down the gangplank, and soon a double row of interlocked shields fended off the grasping hands and pressing bodies. The uproar increased as Cynthia and Feldrin, surrounded by marines, descended the gangplank. As they reached the bottom of the ramp, sunlight glinted on something overhead, a bottle thrown by someone in the crowd. It fell short, but shattered on a marine’s iron helm. The crowd cried out as one, and garbage, bottles and even a few bricks and cobbles flew at them. Officers bellowed orders and the soldiers drew swords, but the crowd remained undaunted.

  Cynthia suddenly thought of a feeding frenzy of predatory fish, their sharp teeth flashing instant death, overwhelming a school of baitfish. Afterward, there was nothing but thousands of tiny silver scales twinkling in the sunlight as they slowly sank. In her rising panic, she clutche
d Kloe closer and bent over to protect him. Something splashed beside the pier, and she started with a sudden realization: though chained, she was not defenseless.

  The sea was near.

  “Feldrin!” she called out over the shouts and curses, unable to see him. “If they break through, try to reach the water!”

  “The water? Cyn, I don’t think you should—”

  But Cynthia never found out what Feldrin thought. A well-aimed stone struck her temple, and the glancing blow sent her to her knees. She heard Feldrin bellow, but his voice sounded far away. Mouse poked his head out of the blanket, and his worried little face swam before her eyes. She reached up to feel the gash, and a wave of dizziness rolled over her. She reached out and caught herself, and the blood on her hand smeared the stones of the pier. A drop of blood fell onto the swaddling blanket, and Kloe began to cry.

  Kloe!

  Anger surged up from her gut like a rogue wave, and she instinctively reached out to the sea. She would drown them all before she’d allow them to harm her child. Strong hands grasped her arms and lifted her to her feet, but she barely felt them. The power built within her, and she wrapped it tightly around herself.

  Come to me, she urged.

  “HOLD!” a voice boomed, impossibly loud over the roar of the crowd.

  Cynthia blinked and turned. Behind them, Resolute bristled with soldiers. Hundreds of archers lined the rails, arrows nocked and ready. The gleaming heads of ballista bolts protruded from the triple row of ports, ready to fly into the crowd. As she realized what was going on, she allowed her power to drain away.

  “Bloody hells, Cyn! Are you okay?” Feldrin was beside her then, one huge hand touching the wound on her head. “Yer bleedin’.”

  “I’m all right,” she said, blinking away the dizziness and swallowing hard, appalled at how close she had been to drowning every person on the pier. Commodore Henkle’s voice boomed out again, unnaturally loud.

  “Everyone stand back from the pier this instant, or we will open fire!”

  His command was answered with an anatomically impossible epithet and a roar of other obscenities. A woman shrieked, “We want justice!” and a chant began: “Justice! Justice! Justice!”

  “You will have justice!” Cynthia now saw Henkle. He was shouting into a large speaking trumpet from the quarterdeck of his ship. “You will have justice, but it will be served by the emperor’s hand, not yours! There will be no justice if we are forced to subdue this crowd! We have orders to take the seamage to the emperor. If you oppose us, there will be more deaths, and the blood will be on your hands, not ours.”

  Cynthia felt the tension drain away from the crowd. There were still muttered curses, but no shouts and no flying objects. The marines jostled them forward and she stumbled, still shaky from her injury and the waning surge of panic and anger.

  “You sure you’re okay, Cyn?” Feldrin asked. The marines allowed him to brace her arm, and he leaned close to her.

  “Yes,” she said, turning to him and pitching her voice low. “But I almost did something very bad, Feldrin.”

  “Yeah, I kinda thought you might.” He tried to smile and failed, his eyes dropping to the blanket. “How is he?”

  “Scared.” Cynthia pulled aside the blanket and looked down at her son. Mouse, looking harried and bedraggled, was cuddled next to the baby, stroking his downy hair and cooing soothing nonsense into his ear. Kloe was wide-eyed and sniffling, but quiet.

  “Well, he’s got company, then,” Feldrin said as they neared the head of the pier.

  A large coach with the royal coat of arms emblazoned on the door awaited them. Six soldiers bearing loaded crossbows rode on the outside of the carriage, and a cordon of mounted soldiers surrounded it. Cynthia and Feldrin were helped aboard, and four more soldiers joined them inside. Dark curtains blocked their view out of the windows and dimmed the interior.

  “Almost like bein’ back in the brig,” the Morrgrey muttered.

  One of the soldiers seated beside Cynthia produced a handkerchief and a canteen. Wetting the cloth, he gingerly touched it to her head, saying, “Just hold still, please, ma’am. It won’t do for you to see His Majesty all bloody.”

  The coach clattered into motion, and the guard wiped the dried blood from her face, and pressed against the wound until the bleeding stopped. Cynthia found the treatment oddly soothing, and when he finished she smiled and said, “Thank you.”

  She and Feldrin had talked for days about facing the emperor’s justice, hoping that he would consider their explanations and not be too harsh. After seeing the mob at the pier, however, she didn’t hold much hope of a light judgment, and worry fluttered like a swarm of butterflies in her stomach.

  ≈

  *This water smells like excrement,* Farsee signed to Shelly as they swam through the murky green haze of Tsing Harbor.

  *Landwalker excrement,* she agreed, flapping her gill slits in disgust. *But we have to see what they do with the seamage.* Cautiously, she swam up and poked her head above the surface.

  Her fins fluttered in shock as she looked around; there were more ships and boats than Shelly could count, some rowing, some sailing and dozens just swinging at anchor. Most of the harbor’s shoreline was edged with cut stone, save for one small beach where boats were dragged up onto the sand like dying whales. At one end was a vast shipyard, ten times the size of the one on the seamage’s island. And the city! The buildings glinted in the sun, so high they touched the sky. At the pier near the warship they had followed, landwalkers clustered thicker than sea lice on a fish carcass.

  It was all so daunting that Shelly considered grabbing Farsee and flipping their flukes hard for home. Only her pride held her; she could detect the seamage by her magic, and the trident holder would want to know that she had been taken to this vast city of landwalkers.

  *Odea! Look at them all!* signed Farsee as his head popped up beside hers.

  *There must be more landwalkers here than all the mer in all the oceans of the world!* Shelly signed back. *How do they live like this?*

  *Trident Holder Broadtail will not like this.* Farsee tugged her underwater and signed, *There are too many landwalkers to find the seamage, and I cannot stand this stench in my gills for long.*

  Shelly agreed, but she tugged his hand and led him back toward the vast hull of the warship that had held Seamage Flaxal Brelak. It had been pushed by a dozen smaller craft against a wide stone pier that swarmed with landwalkers. *I can feel her magic moving away; she is no longer on the water.* She surfaced again to scan the crowd on the pier. They were milling about, many moving away.

  *Not too close, Shelly,* her cousin signed. *I don’t want to be shot full of arrows if they see us. Perhaps we should go home and tell the trident holder.*

  *No!* she signed, flaring her fins. *We must stay here to follow in case they take her away in another ship. My father knows we have gone north. He will send someone to find us. But for now, we can go outside the harbor where the water is clean and we can breathe again.*

  *Good.* Farsee grasped her hand and pulled her away.

  Shelly looked back, reluctant to go too far, but eager to be out of the stench. She clutched Farsee’s hand tightly, lest they become separated in this murk, and flipped her tail for the open sea.

  ≈

  By the time the coach rattled to a halt, Cynthia’s butterflies had evolved into a seething nest of snakes. Her anxiety redoubled when the door of the coach opened onto a scene only slightly less daunting than the crowd on the pier.

  High above their heads, the golden spires of the Imperial Palace glistened in the sun. Cynthia remembered seeing them from afar on her first trip to Tsing, and imagining what it might be like to visit the palace. She hadn’t imagined visiting in chains. She swallowed her panic and descended from the carriage, struggling with th
e cumbersome leg irons. The huge courtyard was crowded with rows of imperial guards, resplendent in full regalia, their gleaming halberds held at the ready. A contingent of guards escorted them past towering doors into the palace, and Cynthia suppressed the feeling of being swallowed whole.

  The entrance hall proved no less crowded than the courtyard. Courtiers and nobles lined up for the spectacle, their whispers rushing like water around the clatter of Cynthia and Feldrin’s chains as they passed. Cynthia fought to keep her eyes forward. She clutched Kloe close, thankful again to Mouse for comforting the child. She didn’t know if she could have endured it if the babe was crying.

  Their twisting track led past innumerable chambers and halls, a maze of brilliantly painted walls, gilded columns, and glittering chandeliers. Cynthia barely noticed it. They walked until she was disoriented and leg-weary, her knees shaking from fatigue or nerves—she couldn’t tell.

  Finally, their guards ushered them through yet another pair of gilded doors into a small audience chamber. Cynthia caught her breath at the beautiful gardens beyond the room’s back wall, which was made entirely of windows. Hibiscus and heliconia bloomed in eye-popping colors, with a backdrop of cascading bougainvillea and lemons ripening from green to yellow hanging heavy on the trees. She felt a twinge of homesickness, remembering her gardens in Southaven. Would she ever see her home again?

  Only after a long moment did she realize that a man sat at a broad desk before the windows. A tall, broad-shouldered woman in simple black clothes stood at his left elbow, and a young man of perhaps fifteen stood to his right. His son, she surmised, noting the resemblance. She recognized Master Upton standing at one end of the desk. At the other end stood a man with the look of a secretary holding a ledger. Though they all looked at her and Feldrin, she got the distinct feeling that their attention was actually focused on the seated man. Then she noticed the thin circlet of gold on his brow; Emperor Tynean Tsing.