“No. Sounds like he got delayed with whatever those negotiations were,” Inda said, fighting impatience. Well, nothing for it. “I’ll get myself to Trad Varadhe alone then. Hire onto a trader going east, let Fox know. That’ll save time.” He turned to Shoofly, then gestured to the Twins. “Jaya and Lith here will shield you, since I can’t take Runners to sea. But you sure you don’t mind being a target?”
“It’ll be fun, being you,” Senegad said. He had a deep, rusty-sounding voice. “I’ll make these slackers sweat.” A thumb jerked at his companions. “Order floggings all around, maybe get ’em to build me a castle or two.”
The dragoons broke into laughter. This was just their kind of humor. So strange, Inda thought, how on land or sea people would work double-tides, and risk their lives, to hoodwink an enemy. These fellows obviously looked forward to long and grueling rides in winter weather in hopes of being spotted by some spy. But . . .
Inda realized they were all staring and forced a grin. He didn’t want to say, “But Senegad is old. I’m midway in my twenties!” Inda rarely looked into a mirror and then only to make certain his clothes weren’t awry, or stained, so he had no notion how his experiences had planed the youth from his face.
He turned out his hands. “Sounds like our plan.”
After a heart-pounding, bone-rattling thrill of a descent through the mountains—tough dragoons whooping like boys—Cama and his Honor Guard marched past Twisted Pine down the switchback carved into the massive landslide above Castle Andahi. Behind the crimson eagle banner, bright against the snowy expanse, a broad-shouldered, heavy-chested, scar-faced man wearing two ruby earrings marched. He was seen later on the sentry walks, waving his hands and pointing as if placing mighty armies for future battles.
King’s Runners Ramond Jaya and Ramond Lith were unhappy at being ordered to remain behind. Until Shoofly’s ruse was put in force, they’d assumed they would accompany Inda out to sea among the pirates and far-flung navies. But Inda was adamant: everyone recognized them now, and they had to protect the fake Harskialdna.
He could see how disappointed they were. He liked them very much. But he hadn’t grown up with them. He didn’t talk about experiences they’d never shared. The truth was, he was relieved when he set out alone.
Nobody paid any heed to a fellow in sloppy sailing clothes and an old sock cap beneath which hung a scruffy four-strand sailor braid. He wore an old knit muffler that only showed the tip of his nose as he hitched a ride on a wagon going from Castle Andahi to Trad Varadhe.
A couple weeks later, Inda shuffled forward in line at the new harbormaster’s warehouse-cum-office at Trad Varadhe as the false Harskialdna and his pack of Guards rode, jingling with martial ardor, down the middle of the road.
The false Harskialdna marched around inspecting the new castle foundations and the partial walls, then kept his men standing about all afternoon, watching the slow process of pouring molten bronze through the openings between the clay core and cope of what would be a great bell. Trad Varadhe’s castle bell had not lasted fifteen years. Made by the Marlovans to their own pattern the year they took Idayago, it had been melted by the Venn soon after their invasion. They took the bronze with them when they retreated.
While that was going on, Inda stood outside a glazier’s shop, transfixed by a process he’d never witnessed before. He watched so long that he nearly missed his tide. A sudden shower recalled the here and now, and he loped down to the dock, paid three times the going rate to be rowed out to the brig called Leaping Fish, and under the scowl of his new captain, went below to stow his gear in the crew’s cabin.
He dug his hand down into his gear bag, closed his fingers around a golden scroll-case, and whispered a transfer spell. Then he thumbed it open. The note he’d prepared—Fox, I’ve just left Trad Varadhe—had vanished.
He hung his bag on its hook just below the hammock assigned him and went to work.
The Sarendan trader Leaping Fish had endured the worst trade voyage ever.
They’d left in 3911 with a hold full of second-tier Sartoran leaf. Pirates, Venn, and finally storms dumped them on the Idayagan beach just in time to discover that the Venn were about to invade. They’d spent the summer dismantling the caravel and hiding it. By that time the Venn had come and gone, but when the captain took a party up into the mountain pine forest above Ghael to find a replacement foremast (fallen, of course—everyone knew the Sartoran Wood Guild would get you if you chopped one down and turn you into a tree or worse, a rock) he found the mountains full of other scavengers.
When they finally located what they needed on an isolated mountaintop and lugged it down, it was to discover from the captain’s unhappy, abandoned brother-in-law that the his remaining crew had succumbed to greed and sold off the ship’s timbers for triple the price. After the Marlovans got rid of the Venn, the new Jarl had offered abandoned farm plots to anyone who farmed them for a year. Half the former crew promptly retired to take up life as landsmen. The others pocketed their gains and signed on to other ships as trade started up again.
After several years of labor, the captain had a new ship. Until the winter of 3920, sailors were plentiful and cheap. But the rumor that the Venn had come back and were prowling the strait made it suddenly difficult to hire anyone without promising stiff pay. He arranged on credit to carry the new island coffee east, but it seemed like any profit he made was going to go straight to the crew.
Then at the hiring dock below the harbormaster’s new house at Trad Varadhe, he got a single break in the long chain of disasters: a sailor obviously trained at all stations who accepted the first (low) pay he offered, without negotiation. The captain had almost chased him off, thinking him a criminal or a drunkard or worse, but desperation prompted him to hire the fellow on trial.
The fellow started off badly by almost missing the tide. He wasn’t much to look at—a shortish, scarred sailor, his Dock Talk Iascan accented. He wore a kerchief round his head, but he had a long sailor-braid, which was what had convinced the captain to accept him as genuine.
A lot of former pirates wore kerchiefs to hide the holes in their ears, but the captain had been a privateer in his early days and could overlook such things—as long as he didn’t see any pirate behavior.
He didn’t. The newcomer was strong and hard-working, experienced, and even abstemious. Within a few days he was promoted to third mate.
Watching Idayago’s shore retreat at last, the captain relaxed. So it was late winter, and the current and the air against them: they could tack and tack eastward, every tack taking them farther from Idayago and closer to home. If they saw anything with a curved prow on the horizon, they’d just dive inland and hide in one of the many inlets.
As they were trying to get around the hump of land between Idayago and Bren, storm after storm blew them back faster than they could sail. They spent a couple of weeks in a cove until the weather relented enough for them to poke out.
And that was when the lookout bellowed from the masthead, “Hai deck! Sail hull down on the horizon, right off the bow!”
Everyone went about their tasks, there being a rough sea and a brisk wind. But when the lookout squeaked, “Them’s pirates!” everyone who had a glass dropped what they were doing and snapped them out.
“All hands! All hands to the sails!” The captain plunged among them, bawling and cuffing right and left. “We’ll have to turn tail and run back to Idayago,” he shouted, sick to the heart.
The third mate appeared at his elbow. “Uh, no you won’t.”
“What?”
“I know those ships,” the mate said. “It’s all right, nothing will happen.” He added awkwardly, “They’re coming for me.”
“What?” The captain did not wait for an answer, but gave the order to hold course. It wasn’t like they could outrun the chasers anyway.
The wind-backed pirate dashed up like a stooping raptor. The trading brig’s crew watched with a mixture of admiration and envy as the trysail, a
low, wicked-looking black-sided vessel, flashed its sails. The way came off it, leaving it rocking on the wintry gray sea. Far in the misty distance, they made out another ship—from the outline, a raffee. Obviously another pirate.
The third mate had vanished and now reappeared on deck. His kerchief was gone, revealing two ruby hoops in his ears, and the captain put together the clues at last. “You with Elgar the Fox?”
His former third mate grinned as the black ship’s gig tossed over the waves toward them. “Whoever I am,” he said, “here’s some advice. If you don’t want to be caught in a Venn sea battle, you keep going straight east, don’t stop, don’t speak to any other ship—keep ’em below the horizon if you can. Understand?”
The fellow with the rubies tossed his gear down into the gig and vaulted over the side.
As the gig splashed its way back to the black pirate ship, the captain said to his second mate, “They can’t be pirates.”
The brother-in-law scanned that black-sided, rake-masted trysail from topgallants to hull, then cocked his head. “What makes you think that, against all evidence of m’own eyes?”
“What pirate would scamp his pay?” the captain asked, not without satisfaction. “That fellow worked all this time, never collected a flim.”
The brother-in-law chewed the inside of his lip as he watched the boat hoist aboard the trysail, and then—just as promised—the sails dropped, sheeted home, and filled. As the ship made an elegant arc and tacked away, he grunted. “Maybe. Here’s what I think. Less we know about that there black ship, and that fellow with the rubies, the better. We’ve had a gut-fill of adventure. Let’s take his advice and stay mum.”
Inda and the gig crew were soaked through and shivering as they clambered aboard the Death. Barend shouted, “Light out to windward!” Then, a wide grin in his triangular face, eyes crescents of mirth, “Heyo, Inda.”
The enormous din of filling sails caused Inda to throw back his head. Exhilaration rushed through him at the sight of Death’s complicated geometry of shrouds, standing and running rigging, the curves of the now-taut sails sheeting home, and he laughed for pleasure. The ship surged as it began to go about; the wintry light over the bow, the sound and smells were so familiar, but so much had changed.
Inda’s reverie broke when Fox sauntered toward him, boot heels loud on the deck boards, the fringes on his fighting kerchief flagging in the wind. He drawled in Marlovan, “You going to stand there all day holding that bag like Peddler Antivad in the stone spell?”
Inda looked at his dunnage as if surprised to discover it there, clutched in his left hand. “Oh.” He followed Fox aft along the companionway. Most of the faces were new, but not all. There were women among them of course. Inda drew in a breath, appreciating the sight of women in bright, tight clothing, all in taut shape. Why weren’t there any women in the dragoons, he wondered wistfully.
“Lorm! Good to see you. Cooking for Death now, instead of Cocodu?”
“I go back and forth,” said tall, somber-faced Lorm, cook aboard the pirate when Inda led his mutiny. “Trainin’ the youngsters now.” Lorm’s somberness eased a little. “Good to see you with us, Inda.”
“Captains in Freeport are beginning to pay smacking good sums for one of Lorm’s trained cooks,” Fox said, smiling.
Inda was still scanning the crew. “Where’s Fibi the Delf?”
“Died at The Fangs,” Barend said from abaft the wheel.
“Did you send word to the Delfs to let them know?”
“Soon’s we landed.” Barend’s fingers flicked in salute.
Inda felt stupid. Of course they knew Delf clan customs. He wondered why he had asked such a stupid question, then thought, It’s Fox’s fleet. But I’m acting like it’s mine.
Barend looked Fox’s way. “Signal all captains soon’s they’re in sight?”
“Yes.” Fox made an ironic gesture toward the cabin and led the way inside. A new rat brought in flat-bottomed cups of whiskey-laced hot wine, ordered as soon as the brig was hull up. She turned curious eyes to the famous Elgar the Fox, then sped back to her mates crowded along the companionway below. “He’s got the two earrings, but he’s short!”
“He’s not short, he’s medium,” said a mid, one of Cama’s orphans, now a seasoned sailor. “You easterners don’t know nothin’.”
In the cabin, Inda took in the etched silver tray resting on a black-wood sideboard inlaid with golden lily patterns and the beautiful golden gondola lamp swinging overhead.
None of these furnishings were familiar. Even the cabin itself seemed altered in dimension. Inda dropped his dunnage on a side chest carved with cranes in flight and squelched onto the adjacent bench, concentrating on the inward-curving lines to the cabin. Yes, it had changed.
Well, so have I.
“So what happened? Why is there no defense of Bren?”
Fox said, “The allies were afraid to leave their own coasts open to one another, though they blamed the Venn out loud, and the Chwahir in secret. Oh, and Deliyeth has her own crazy notions. Finally the Khanerenth diplomat got them to agree that The Fangs is more defensible. Especially as we wouldn’t have the Chwahir in support anywhere else but off their own coast.”
Inda clapped his hands on his knees. “Fangs is better than Bren, actually. Just where I’d pick, if I could pick the ground.”
“Which the Venn are sure to realize.” Fox dropped into his chair next to the desk, poured out two cups, and sipped his wine, amused by Inda’s abstracted air. When the silence had lengthened, Fox broke it. “Were you in Andahi?”
Inda blinked, the sudden onslaught of memory breaking like dreams. He looked up, wondering if that was Fox’s way of asking how Cama and Ndand were. He’d heard about how well they’d all got along. “Didn’t poke my nose in the castle,” he said. “Slipped on by, while a fellow pretended to be me. In case of either Venn or Idayagan assassins.”
“Some,” Fox drawled, “might call the Idayagans would-be rescuers of their invaded kingdom. Never mind, don’t waste the breath arguing over what’s already occurred. But Venn assassins? I will wager this entire fleet that Erkric would love to get hold of you for some of his Norsundrian spell-casting.”
“Dags. Magic. I forgot about that.” Inda grimaced as he pulled a cloth-wrapped roll from his gear bag. “Weird, when you consider that they came close to trying a snatch on Evred. But he gives the orders at home, not me. What use would it be grabbing me and turning me into a puppet, since my orders come from the king?”
“Those of us who know you would twig to it in a heartbeat,” Fox said. “Making me wonder how many secretly cooperated with Erkric up there in the cold northlands, if he really has taken over the king’s mind as you said.” He pointed to the scroll-case.
“Signi told me that Erkric kept isolating Rajnir, one person at a time. Starting when he was young.”
Fox drummed his fingers on the desk. “Perhaps. So, have you come up with a plan?”
“Did nothing else but, these past two or three weeks. One thing I’ve learned is, people expect the plan. Not a plan.”
“You’re talking about leadership.”
Inda waggled a hand, and then began to peel off the cloth wrappings around the roll. “I think leadership is mostly in people’s heads. Most want to follow if they’re not sure of a win. Want to lead only if they know they’ll win. Against the Venn? They want me to lead. I’ve got to have the plan. D’you see?”
Fox shook with silent laughter. “Is this an abrogation of your position as hero?”
“It’s me telling you I have a plan, and unless you have anything better, you’re going to help me convince whoever we get as allies that it’s the plan. Because here’s what I’ve been finding in my reading. The other half of leadership is believing their leader is so good they make it true.” He finished unwrapping his rolled chart and looked around. His vague expression turned to a frown of perplexity as he indicated the handsome carved desk built into the bulkhead. “This thing is f
ine, but where’s the old chart table?”
“Forward wardroom. So what you’re telling me is that you have more than one plan?”
“Yes. One’s got to stay secret. Only you and me and Barend’ll know. Jeje, if she’s here.”
“You don’t trust your former mates?” Fox’s brows slanted upward.
“I don’t trust anyone who might be listening in on ’em,” Inda retorted. “In the old days, I knew every face. Now I won’t. And like you said, there are spies all around. Probably in every single one of the allied fleets waiting for us.”
“Except maybe the Chwahir. I can’t imagine Thog being that remiss.”
“Thog? You saw her again?”
“Yes. She’s got a sizable force for us to use at The Fangs.”
“Thog.” Inda shook his head. “I guess I’ll think about that later. Back to my plan. It’s the easiest way. One’s public, the other secret.”
“Very well. What is that?”
“Signi made a chart showing Venn navigation.” Inda leaned against Fox’s fine desk and carefully unrolled Signi’s mirror chart.
Fox studied the lines propagating out in spokes from certain harbor cities, crossing the axes from other cities in a bewildering grid of diamond shapes. He set aside his empty cup then placed a finger on The Narrows, midway between the land bridge that almost connected the Toaran continent to the Halian. He put another finger on the Nob, and slowly brought the fingers up the drawn lines bisecting each location until they reached a city he’d never heard of, halfway up the west coast of Drael.
Inda pointed at the map. “We can’t use it to navigate. If we use their ‘ting’ as they call it, it bounces back to all the other dags, making us appear as a dot on their maps and charts.”
Fox whistled softly. “We don’t need it to navigate, we just need to see them. This chart will get us back through the Venn blockade. We had to wait for a storm to come this way.” He looked up. “But how do we judge where we are in reference to these dots of light?”
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