Treason's Shore

by Sherwood Smith

  The madness of Rainorec, Durasnir thought, remembering what Brun had said. Erkric is rushing the Oneli into victory or death. The more of us who die, the easier it is for him to put his dags in our place.

  He paused halfway down the barnacle-covered ladder to the boat, then dropped the rest of the way. “Heh. Signal flags.”

  Seigmad settled beside him, his joints protesting as he slewed around. “Command to win sea room,” he translated, and clamped his mouth shut on the question, Who got that souleater Erkric to listen to sense?

  As the boat crew plied their oars, the two commanders observed the expert shift of sail along that vast row, following which the ships turned, beautiful in profile against the thickening white haze. All sails set, even studding sails extending to either side, an impressive sight, or would be impressive when the sagging sailcloth filled.

  Seigmad wiped sweat out of his eyes and sat back, considering his words. If he looked sideways, he could catch the faint glimmer of magic along the gunwales, reminding him of the ever-present spiderwebs. “I don’t understand that comment about surrender. The Marlovans never surrendered, everyone attests to that.”

  “Talkar, Henga, everyone reported that the women cut down their own flag in response to the offer of peaceful surrender. My guess is, Idayagans watching from the mountain heights above Andahi Castle misread the gesture. Thought it capitulation.”

  “Idayagans would have shit themselves if we’d hove up on the horizon when they held that castle.” Seigmad chuckled.

  “They certainly wouldn’t have been able to surrender fast enough,” Durasnir said as he lifted his glass to the mountain heights on either side of the river, then swept it over the terraced city below. He focused on the steady stream of inhabitants, many pulling small carts as they evacuated into the hills. The line wavered, some gesturing away toward the east. A few began to hasten back down again. Others stood around in knots, talking and gesticulating.

  “Looks like a cross-sea getting up,” Seigmad said as the first of a set of waves rolled toward them. The boat began rocking, sending up refreshing splashes of water.

  Durasnir said to the crew, “Stretch out.”

  Not that they needed the reminder; the boat soon reached the Petrel, which promptly raised sail and tacked away on the fitful, hot gusts blowing out of the west, veering sharply south and then back again.

  By the time Durasnir reached the Cormorant, the opaque white line all dreaded formed with deceptive slowness across the eastern horizon, thickening rapidly.

  The sail crews had already taken in the jibs and studding sails. The maincourse came down as Durasnir clambered aboard, yelling, “Luff! Luff! Abandon the boat!” They’d just begun to ease off when the first wind hit, knocking the ship on its beam ends.

  The main- and fore-topsails ripped free of the bolt-ropes edging them; several men were flung overboard, their cries unheard as the wind screamed, sleet flying horizontally with the force of arrows.

  Crack! The foremast tipped slowly toward sudden mountainous seas, rigging snaking after. Durasnir grabbed up a hatchet, hacking madly at the tangle. For an endless time everyone on board fought to cut away the snarl of rigging and canvas and wood, then to get a scrap of sail on the maintop, enough to keep them up into the wind. They had lost sight of the others. They existed alone in lightning-flared blackness, sky, sea, storm all one ferocious vortex.

  When the storm at last expended itself the next morning, leaving a white-foaming sea strewn with wreckage, Erkric emerged from the great cabin, his face blanched into extreme age.

  “The king wishes us to take this harbor at once.” His voice shook.

  Durasnir had expected those orders. As the storm began to lose force, the sea dags had begun locating themselves and reporting in, the lists of damage appalling. Devastating as the storm had been on the Oneli, it would have been equally terrible on shore, and Durasnir doubted that Llyenthur would put up much of a fight. How many of their ships had been wrecked on the rocks of those islands they’d been hiding behind?

  Then Erkric spoke again, and this time took Durasnir by surprise. “Once you have secured this harbor, the king wishes to establish a base here. You will send messages under white flag to Bren and Nelsaiam, giving them a year to surrender their harbors.”

  Durasnir gave the necessary orders, then retreated to his cabin. Erkric must have been frightened by his first typhoon, Durasnir thought, sitting down to wait for the first food and drink he’d had since the morning before the storm. He crossed his arms and laid his head down, falling immediately into a deep slumber.

  Erkric prowled the deck, making and discarding plans. The storm was already forgotten. What frightened him had occurred before the storm hit, while Durasnir and Seigmad were en route from the parley.

  All on his own, with no signal or sign, Rajnir had suddenly said, “I want the fleet to win sea room.” And he had turned to Erkric, his blue eyes aware. “Order the signals, my Dag.”

  Chapter Six

  ON a balcony one floor above the King’s Saunter, the once-grand boardwalk sweeping in a grand arc along the inner harbor at Freeport, Nugget stood with a spyglass to her eye. “Cocodu’s warping back in,” she called.

  Footsteps pounded up the staircase from the bakery below. Pilvig appeared, her black eyes wide, round face flushed. “We’re all ready.”

  Nugget squealed, a shrill, keening squeal that stopped the strollers below, causing most to laugh, some to shake heads, a few sourmouths to curse.

  But most of the people in Freeport Harbor were in good moods, because today was Midsummer’s Day. There’d been no spring this year, so Flower Day’s Games had been postponed until now.

  By the end of breakfast, one of Dhalshev’s staff had run along the Saunter to each of the businesses, collecting donations for the favorite event: the gold bag run.

  The time was set for noon, just as the tide would turn. Volunteer guards stood glowering along the docks floating on the water below the Saunter, protecting the rowboats waiting for the competing teams.

  Mutt sat at the best table at the best tavern on the Saunter, observing with a combination of amazement and satisfaction the sweep of windows in a broad, semicircular bank. They slanted inward, emulating the stern windows of a captain’s cabin as they overlooked the northern end of the Saunter, the main square, and the pier end of Freeport’s main street. When the sun dropped westward toward the entrance to the harbor, sometimes it threw light reflections over the ceiling of the tavern, with its ancient painting of some night sky no one could figure out.

  Mutt twisted his head: there was the betting book, and the ceramic pot with the money collected over the years from those who wrote a guess and bought in. Someday someone would identify that sky, and if they could find the one who’d guessed right, that person would get the pot.

  Mutt remembered that pot, and the guess book, and the sky, from his very first day in Freeport. He had been so young he couldn’t remember much from before then. Just cold, hunger, and this building, and the grown-ups chasing him out again when he tried to climb up and steal the pot.

  He’d always meant to steal the pot, just because. He had even organized some of the other orphans at the doss down at the far end of the Saunter, where castoffs lived, if you didn’t mind hard work for nothing more than a place to sleep and food to eat. Then Inda took him on. When he next returned to Freeport, the bet and the pot and the weird sky were just funny.

  Now he was sitting here, a captain in his own right, member of the toughest independent fleet in the southern world. The indies and privateers gave place when he and his fellow captains in the Fox Banner Fleet sauntered the Saunter. Weird what life did to you. If you survived.

  Just beyond the windows lay a brick terrace full of benches and tables; in good weather, those tables, with their vantage on the Octagon, the main pier, and the city square, were the place to be seen.

  The squeak-squeak-squeak of wheels that spent too much time in the salt air broke Mutt�
��s reverie.

  “Beautiful, eh?” Mutt tipped his head toward Cocodu, his new command, alone there in the harbor.

  Only a captain could see beauty in a ship wallowing under a single scrap of sail, otherwise bare poles glistening suspiciously, a bag dangling from the mainmast top.

  Dasta leaned back in his wheelchair, smiling wistfully around his tavern. “Beautiful,” he repeated.

  He still had bad dreams about those days following the Venn attack. The list of dead, including old shipmates—Fox’s angry voice offering someone a king’s ransom if they could heal Dasta’s backbone. “It late,” an old woman quavered in heavily accented Dock Talk, as Dasta lay shivering and sweating in his bunk. “Much late, you here much late.”

  Dasta gazed in satisfaction at his tavern. A fighting ship captain needed at least one working leg. His legs were just there, unable to move, so Dasta had used his part of the treasure and bought the best tavern on Freedom Island.

  His tavern. He liked tavern keeping, he’d discovered. He liked hearing the tales the captains brought in. The only thing that really hurt bad was a year ago spring, when Fox gave the orders to sail. He’d watched them all grin and hasten to pack up their gear, just like he’d once done. Then they’d sailed away, leaving him sitting on his newly bricked terrace.

  He was glad to have them around now . . . except why were they here? Fox lounged around as if it were still winter.

  “You know Nugget’s going to compete?” Dasta asked.

  Mutt grinned. “Why d’you think I sent Cocodu way out there to prepare? I knew she’d post her posse on the roofs to spy out whatever she could.”

  “That’s exactly what they’ve been doing,” Dasta said.

  Nugget’s headquarters was Dasta’s second best room upstairs.

  “Charge ’em double for being annoying.” Mutt snickered.

  They were all rich, or at least rich as mariners understood rich. Mutt was glad Dasta had bought this tavern, now his second home. Mutt even had a room of his own—he’d paid Dasta five years’ rent, so no one would ever sleep in it or touch his few belongings. It was the idea of a home that he liked, a place always waiting for him whenever the tide brought him back.

  Not that he would leave anything important there. His mind snapped to his share of the treasure, still stored on Cocodu. Mutt thought back to his promotion as captain right after the battle at Jaro, and Dasta lying in the bunk, shivering and sweating by turns as he whispered on and on in an effort to tell Mutt things a captain should know about Cocodu. Dasta had spent years tapping and twisting at all the bric-a-brac in the cabin, discovering new secret compartments over time. During his fits of wakefulness, he’d directed Mutt to most of them.

  Made sense to keep one’s stash there. If the ship went down, Mutt was likely to be going down with it. He still didn’t know what to do with that much treasure anyway . . . sometimes he wondered what Nugget would do with hers . . . Nugget.

  “I’m not surprised Nugget’s going for it,” Mutt said, watching that bag swinging against Cocodu’s mainmast. “It’s not the gold. It’s winning.”

  Dasta grunted. “She’ll get it, too. She’s been drilling her team out back of Lark.”

  “I know.” Mutt grinned. “I bet against her. Just to make her mad.”

  Dasta chuckled, then made their old ship rat signal for “captain coming.” “Fox given out any orders?” he asked Mutt.

  Mutt shrugged and spread his hands. “You know how gabby he is.” Sometimes he felt so tough, being a captain of a fast raffee with a wicked rep. The girls along the Saunter thought him something fine, that’s for sure. But when Fox loomed up, silent as a cat, he felt like a ship rat again. “I don’t know what he’s up to. Nobody does. Know what else? I think Dhalshev hates him. Wishes we were gone.”

  Dasta snorted. “Always known that.”

  Above, from the balcony around the Octagon’s top, Harbormaster Dhalshev watched the competitors shoving their way through the crowds to line up along the stone rail carved with a lyre motif.

  Thick as the crowd was, everyone flowed around the single black-clad figure walking down the middle of the Saunter toward Dasta’s Chart House, hand raised against the sun as Fox contemplated Cocodu being anchored stern-on.

  Dhalshev eyed that lean, straight-backed figure. The only color about Fox at this distance was the ruby glinting in one ear and that bright red hair.

  “Lookin’ at Fox?” The deep, slightly husky voice belonged to Jeje, the single member of the Fox Banner Fleet permitted entry to the Octagon’s command center at the very top.

  “Is he always the center of attention?” Dhalshev asked, not taking his eyes away from Fox.

  “I dunno. He’s not popular, like, say, Mutt. Or Dasta. Or Eflis. I think people notice him just to stay out of his way.”

  Dasta or Eflis or you, Dhalshev thought, but didn’t say it. You never knew with Jeje. She might get flustered, or she might turn that ferocious scowl onto you and vanish. “Why does he wear only one of those ruby earrings?” Dhalshev asked. “From what I understand of your tradition, he could wear two.”

  “He won’t. And just laughs when anyone asks why.” Jeje made a spitting motion, more habit than conviction.

  “I’m certain I’d get the same nonanswer if I asked what his plans were.”

  “Heyo.” Jeje leaned against the rail. “He’s not going to take over Freedom, if that’s where you’re going.”

  He already runs it, Dhalshev thought wryly. Everyone deferred to Fox, everyone. Dhalshev maintained a carefully neutral affect toward him, something he didn’t have to think about with anyone else, even the occasional pirate who sailed in. These latter obeyed Dhalshev’s rules, or he could raise the harbor against the pirates. Pirates knew it, sailors knew it, merchants knew it.

  Fox could order his fleet to take the harbor, and though the harbor might fight back, they’d lose. Harbor knew it, Fox Banner Fleet knew it. Dhalshev knew it.

  Dhalshev knew Fox knew it.

  The last gold bag team was in place along the wall now, the individuals jostling impatiently. Dhalshev waved to his signaler on duty, who blew the horn, and a shout rose below as the teams stampeded down the ramps to the floating docks. Gusts of laughter rose, and howls of encouragement or insult (or both), as people got shoved or tripped (or thrown) into the water. Boats launched, oars splashing hard. Boats rammed one another, tried to hook one another. Laughter and shouting rose to such a pitch the sea birds roosting on the slanting roofs flapped skyward, scolding.

  “Here’s a strange thing,” Dhalshev said as he pinpointed golden-haired Nugget below, her team skimming to cut off the fastest boat. “Even kings can’t guarantee orderly transfer of power. Though most would like to. Especially the ones who took over.”

  “Kings.” This time Jeje did spit, but out over the water below the rail. “Whyja bring up kings? Fox remind you of one?”

  Dhalshev did not make the mistake of thinking that in any way complimentary.

  Fox sauntered up the wide brick stair to Dasta’s tavern, and crammed as the place was, sure enough, everyone got out of his way until he dropped down next to Dasta’s chair at the best table. They could see the bay, the curve of the Saunter into the main street, and the Octagon—and they could be seen.

  “No,” Dhalshev said. “And yes. In all ways he’d make the most sense to replace me as harbormaster. But I don’t want him for that very reason.”

  Jeje looked up, quick concern. “You’re not abandoning Freeport? It’s home!”

  “No, no,” Dhalshev said, patting the air. “But I wasn’t young when I settled this place, nearly twenty years ago. Some days during winter, I wonder how much longer I’ll get up those steps. I’d like to hand it off to someone who would maintain what I’ve made.”

  “And you don’t know with Fox. Well, neither do we. He’s got some plan in that brick head of his,” Jeje exclaimed. “I just hate that. He smiles and I want to smack his face off. Last year the weather was jus
t as bad, or almost, and we sailed anyway. Went after that villain Finna, the renegade Venn. Fox says it’s the weather, why we haven’t sailed by now, but I know he’s waiting for something.”

  So that answered Dhalshev’s main question. If Fox hadn’t told Jeje, then he wasn’t talking to anyone, except maybe Barend—but he was even more close-mouthed than Fox.

  Out on the water, Nugget stood poised on the bow of her boat, bare feet balancing on the gunwales, her hand swinging her rope in a glittering circle.

  Just as three boats converged on hers, she sent the rope shooting upward in a perfect arc, the hook catching on the upper shrouds. She leaped up, turning end over end as the rope wrapped round her legs; below, her crew whipped out spears from the boat bottom and turned on the attackers, sending two scurrying. One held its position, only to get a full pot of oil splattered over them.

  “Nugget’s got it,” Jeje said. “Heh!”

  “Not yet. She seems to be sitting there on the fore-masthead.” Dhalshev rubbed his jaw, remembering Nugget’s shrill voice when she was small, her limitless hunger for attention. “Is this demonstration to prove to the world she’s as good as those with two arms?”

  “Naw, she already did that long ago. Had to, the way Fox smacked her around until she fought back. I think it’s ’cause Mutt got up her nose. Those two, they’re either brother and sister—squabbling like ’em, I mean—or else lovers. Nobody knows which they’ll be one day or the next, least of all them.”

  Dhalshev observed the furious scramble on the Cocodu’s deck. Splashes all around the rail caused whoops and shouts in the spectators; above, Nugget swung back and forth, bopping heads. As yet she hadn’t hooked over to the mainmast to grab the bag, though the younger crew of the Fox Banner Fleet, who’d spent all last spring learning to fly about the upper masts, knew she could any time she wanted to.

  “Didn’t you sit her and Mutt down?” he asked, as one who’d ended up being in some wise a father to Nugget.