“. . . if the Chwahir try to offer surrender, be aware of a ruse. They fight to the finish, the Chwahir. Always. If one surrenders, he will be flayed if sent home.”
Another stir and a grimace.
Balandir thought, Slowbellies all. Ugly old tubs, but we need the wood. Ugly, and easy wins.
“And finally, the leaders. We are told that the king has offered rank and land to anyone who brings the head of Elgar the Fox. Either of ’em,” Durasnir corrected. “I’ve seen the one. He’s quite short, scar-faced, brown hair. Broad through the chest. Fights like a berserker, as effective as the demons of ancient lore. You will have heard stories from Andahi Pass. Those do not exaggerate, for I was a witness. The other is tall, red-haired, dressed in black, and reports claim he is as formidable, or nearly. I suggest you shoot them if you can. Questions?”
“Does the king sail with you?” Seigmad asked the question most were thinking.
Durasnir looked down, then up. “I have not been told. I will assume unless instructed otherwise that he remains aboard the mage ship—”
“—for his own protection.” Dag Erkric spoke from the door, his voice rusty with exhaustion, but his sunken eyes were quick and alert. “The banner will fly at the head mast of the flagship when you launch toward attack and victory, I am enjoined to inform you.”
Durasnir said, “And my son?”
Erkric smiled. “At the king’s side, the place of honor, O my Oneli Stalna.”
“Phew. When is the last time you changed the king’s linens, Uncle?”
“Less than a week!” said Dag Yatar to his nephew.
“It smells more like a year.”
“Why? All he does is sleep.”
“Must get hot in here during the day. Did you work an Air Funnel Spell? I notice the scuttles are closed.”
“The Dag’s requirements.” Yatar dragged the ensorcelled bucket over, loathing this thrall duty. At least it was the king, though these past months had proved that royal flesh was exactly like any other flesh in the most mundane regards. “Why go to the fatigue of creating an air funnel when they won’t notice? It’s not as if they’ll smother, not in a leaky ship.”
The other thing that made this duty bearable were Erkric’s spells that lifted the king and turned him. Yatar could not imagine how much magic had been expended, though he was grateful. It must be akin to the spells that enabled those winged folk up in the mountains above Sartor to fly.
“You done with the boy yet? You could help me get these robes over him. Even when he’s like this—” He indicated the king motionless in the air. “—he’s become so fat . . .”
“Why do we have to dress him in the whites?”
“The Dag said the Oneli might expect to see him out there under the banner when they form the line before the attack. Ulaffa says he thinks it will be tomorrow. Maybe even tonight.”
A sigh. “Can’t come too soon. I’ll be glad to settle in Jaro again. Best quarters we ever had. Far nicer than home, though it doesn’t do to say.”
Yatar snorted. By the Dag’s order they’d been committing far more crimes against their oaths than belittling cold, frozen, storm-ridden Twelve Towers with its scarce two months of near summer weather.
Yatar and his nephew—promoted to dag just last year by Erkric himself—finished, one dipping Rajnir’s long yellow hair in the ensorcelled bucket and then combing it smooth, the other painstakingly making certain the glorious long white brocade tunic over the heavy pure white linen shirt were all wrinkle free and smooth.
The magic spell was reversed, which gently laid the king back onto the freshened bed. Then the Yatars layered another nine of the Mind-shroud Spells over boy and king, according to their orders from Erkric, who’d said, We don’t know how long the spells last. There can never be enough. He was still harried by those unexpected, and unexplained, breaks, which at least had not been repeated.
The two dags left.
Rajnir had got much faster at removing the spells from the inside. In fact, he was probably the only mage (mage in a very limited sense, but he was one) who could perform magic mentally, without the aid of the mnemonics and gestures that enabled the human mind to “hold” magic then link what they thought of as spells. Few could manage that for little spells, but Rajnir had become adept at very complex, dangerous magic out of enforced necessity and sustained will.
He had learned to remove the spells from himself first. He’d made the mistake of wakening the boy first, to discover (or rediscover) just how thin was a boy’s veneer of bravado. When the last shroud dissipated, the first sounds he heard were Halvir’s sobs. He’d thought the king dead.
Rajnir brought himself out from the magic shroud, then Halvir. The boy yawned, and then came the rustling noises of his stretching. “Should be night watch now,” he whispered. “Want me to check?”
“Please.”
Another memory recovered, the elastic strength of boyhood. Halvir had a clear enemy, a secret, a companion to share the secret with, and a goal. His mood was sunny, he even laughed over the humiliation of being controlled by magic.
“I wiggled my toes and fingers a little, and they don’t notice,” Halvir whispered in triumph.
“Don’t test them,” Rajnir warned. “I did, and look what’s happened to me.”
He could hear Halvir’s shrug and did not elaborate. As Halvir crawled to the door and felt for magic—and yet again did not find it—Rajnir reflected on that humiliation.
He did not, and would not, burden the boy with the horror of control of his own body being taken from him. At first commanded to eat meals meant for an active man, he’d slowly but inexorably become fat, for there were no more sessions with his Erama Krona training masters. There was no more sex, there was no more walking just to feel the sun and wind. When Erkric returned after months away and found out how fat the king had become, they’d starved him. There were days and days when all he was permitted to eat (ordered to eat, under control of the shroud) was a single orange. Or a single biscuit. A chicken wing.
His flesh still hung from his bones. But he could lift his arms, and if he bent his legs first, he could lift those, too. And he could turn over, though mustering that much effort turned the bed into a damp nest of sweat.
I made myself thrall to Erkric, until brought to my duty by a boy who still believes that a king is still a king.
So while Halvir fingered the door open just a crack, and then rolled the tiny piece of wood he’d scratched from the decking and molded to a round shape, Rajnir exercised grimly, lifting legs and arms over and over.
Halvir flicked his piece of wood through the crack in the door . . . and the Erama Krona did not start.
He’d learned when he was a small boy aboard the Cormorant, that if a single noise occurred where the prince was, the Erama Krona were alert. They moved with unnerving smoothness to cover one another and Prince Rajnir as they investigated. Even something as inconsequential as a mouse scuttling across the deck.
Halvir hadn’t admitted that the boys had loosed mice a few times, just to see what happened. Halvir had been little then, but he remembered it. That had been the first secret the bigger boys had ever included him in on. It was a good memory, how they’d collapsed in writhing, red-faced heaps in their effort to keep from laughing out loud. That was until the Erama Krona somehow caught them. The beating the big boys got was fearful indeed. Halvir remembered that, too.
So when he’d first tried opening the door and found the expected Erama Krona outside—and then a lee lurch during a thunderstorm sent a piece of something tumbling about the outer cabin, and they hadn’t reacted—it hadn’t taken long to figure out that the dags were shrouding the Erama Krona. When he shared his observation with the king, Rajnir said, “The dags’re taking risks. They must be overreached. They don’t tie us up anymore, and they must be shrouding the Erama Krona so they don’t have to explain their actions coming and going.”
Halvir agreed, shivering with delight. He and th
e king had become conspirators, and because he was with the king, he was doing right.
Three . . . four . . . five . . . The Erama Krona guards did not even twitch.
So the boy crept between them, feeling his way along the perimeter of the cabin rather than making for the swinging bar of light from the hatch above.
As drips of water plopped down from the working of the rolling ship, he eased along a companionway, practiced after years of hide-and-seek games, and scouted out his next hidey-hole before he snaked from the one he was in.
He had yet to make it to the top deck. Too many people around. From the way they all moved and talked, only the ones on the deck below had the shrouding spells, so he had to be extra careful.
But he’d learned things. He’d learned that they were soon to be in battle, and that the two dags would be on Battlegroup captains’ decks to do magic. He’d learned that Dag Erkric would be back.
The ship rose steeply, causing Halvir to wedge himself between a barrel and a bulkhead. The plunge the other way almost threw him down the companionway.
The bell ringing hard for “all hands” sent Halvir scrambling below again. He eased back into the room, and then, reluctantly, climbed onto his bed. How he hated that bed! But the king had convinced him that it was safest to be in place, as they never had much warning when the Enemy were approaching.
“Made it almost to the galley, O my king,” Halvir said.
Rajnir had tried to get the boy to drop protocol, but Halvir had been so uncomfortable at the idea of saying “Rajnir,” it was clear that whatever remained of conventional response to rank was comforting.
It had nothing to do with Rajnir’s worth. He knew that. All that time for thought had brought him to many disquieting truths, beginning with the conviction that the distancing of protocol—so necessary to make the king seem greater than human—was the opposite of friendship, or indeed, of any kind of real communication. He’d so missed the friendship he’d enjoyed as a boy before he was singled out by Erkric to be heir that he’d participated in the lethally false friendship of Count Wafri. Rajnir had plenty of time to review memories and to see where he had accepted Wafri’s skill at the pretence of friendship, his combination of flattery and demand for intimacy, just the way he’d accepted Erkric’s smooth explanations for all the disasters that had singled Rajnir out for kingship. He’d believed because he’d wanted those things to be true, not from conviction, but because life was easier that way. But when he wanted to act like a prince, and exert his authority . . . I don’t like that fellow Wafri, Vatta had said. He smiles too much.
I want us all to be friends. They do things differently in Ymar. I want him to be one of us.
He hates us.
No he doesn’t. You don’t trust him because you don’t like him. You don’t like Ymarans.
That day when the Chwahir closed on their ship. The smell of the wind, the color of the light on Vatta’s face. Wafri’s as he grinned across the cabin. “I thought you boys swore to protect your prince?” he said, laughing softly.
Rajnir remembered Vatta paused—the way he looked from Wafri to Rajnir and back—then picked up his sword and was gone. He left before Rajnir could say, The Erama Krona will do that. Rajnir had wanted to impress Wafri with Vatta’s loyalty, his prowess.
He wondered if Halvir looked like Vatta, but did not dare turn his head when the dags brought light in, and in the dark, he could not see and did not ask. He did not demand the trappings of friendship with Halvir—a king ordering companionship. Instead, he fumbled tentatively toward communication by sharing memories, by listening, debate even—he never insisted he was right because he was king. He shared jokes.
The truth Rajnir had to accept: he had never been the smartest or most able. He was only the most amiable and lazy.
Now he had to make amends, or he betrayed Vatta and everyone else who had died to make him king.
“Where were we?” Rajnir asked. He remembered very well what they’d been saying before the last interruption, the exact words. That was one thing he’d won from all that time imprisoned inside his head. He could remember a magic spell if he just heard it once. And he could recall every detail of his memories. He revisited them over and over.
But if he asked where they were, the boy could pick the subject of their discourse.
“You left off telling me about the time you and Sefni Loc and my brother loosed the spiders down the Balandir sleep-chamber air vent.”
“Ah yes. First we had to catch the spiders . . .”
Chapter Twenty-four
INDA sailed in the Death up and down the forming line. Each flotilla worked hard to wear and tack on station, conscious of observant eyes on neighboring bows and taffrails. A summer storm rolled away to the northeast, leaving clear sky and a strong wind out of the southwest.the Just where Inda wanted it. Wasn’t the advantage an east wind would give, but this time of year, there was no east wind. A southwest wind gave neither line the advantage. Only Barend’s surprise would do that.
The captains of the alliance watched Inda grinning on his captain’s deck as the Death slid goose-winged past them on this last inspection, the trysail’s black sides shining with new paint, sails expertly handled. Inda passed close enough so he could yell encouragements to each captain.
“Remind your small ships to travel in packs of three, whatever they attack!”
“Stay in line!”
And, most often, “We can take ’em! Stay in formation and we can take ’em!”
His grin, his excitement, was more convincing than all the words. He knew something, they felt it. It was easy enough to translate that into: he knew he would win. He never lost a battle.
When he’d finished sailing down the line, the Death began to beat close-hauled back to the central position.
Inda found Fox laughing quietly in the cabin as he waved his hand over the mirror chart. “And there goes our spy, straight west in the storm.” His finger moved toward the line of glowing dots nearing The Fangs. “If the wind just stays with that southing . . .” He brushed his fingers over the rocky coast of Danara, where Barend and his fleet of Delfin Islanders had been practicing maneuvers in one of the bays guarded by a squadron of Chwahir personally appointed by Thog.
Fox looked up. “Thog kept the secret or the Venn would be broken into two wings by now.”
Inda was still relieved that he’d had his talk with Thog before the inevitable sighting of Barend’s surprise off the Chwahir coast. “The Chwahir kept our secret and we kept theirs. Are we done?” A memory, the dinner aboard Cocodu for the Fox Banner Fleet captains, Gillor at one end looking grim, Tcholan and Khajruat Swift either too formal or too smirky at the other end. Later in the evening, just before Inda was going to leave, Gillor at the rail, her face invisible in the darkness, her voice low with regret, I never should have married. I don’t have it in me to stay true to one man. I told myself it was all right for me to stray. It was always quick, I always come back. But when I found him and Khajruat playing hammock dance—and I like to fight alongside her!—I wanted to kill them both, so I knew it was time to slip cable and run. Inda tipped his head toward Tcholan’s Wind’s Kiss, with Gillor’s Rapier abaft, exactly on station. “They’ll be all right?”
“They’re my tightest captains, them and Eflis, and they’re used to working together.” Fox made what was meant to be a lazy gesture, but his hands betrayed his tension. “They’ll dissolve their marriage contract when we get back to Freedom. Go right back to business as usual.” He sat back. “So . . . we are done.”
They regarded one another, Fox tired from too many nights of wakefulness. He was momentarily distracted by Pilvig moving past the open door as she put her boarder-repel team through a rigorous drill in spite of the weather; her crimson trousers and long yellow kerchief were distractions in themselves, especially on a crew member who had always dressed to be unobtrusive.
Then he wiped a loose strand of his wet hair impatiently off his brow as he trie
d to recall the long chain of reasoning he’d put together while handling the tricky navigation himself as the Death threaded through the line.
He gave up trying to find a last, compelling bit of reasoning, and said, “Inda, I hate this plan.”
Inda turned out his hands. “There’s precedent for it, I figured that out. Signi mentioned some custom the Venn have. Hel—hal—”
“Halmgac. The duel on the far shore.” Fox flipped up the back of his hand in the direction of the Venn. “I should be fighting such a thing. Not you. That arm of yours is . . .” He made a violent warding gesture. “Doesn’t matter. That soul-sucker Erkric will be damned certain you won’t ever get the chance to come at him with sword or knife, Inda.”
“Surprise is still on my side,” Inda said, thinking: And if I lose, everyone’s in the right place, you heading the fleet, Tau to make peace after. But he knew better than to give Fox orders. Fox knew what Evred wanted. “Let Barend strike first, right?”
“I’ll hold our line back until he says they’re engaged.” Fox brandished the scroll-case, speaking the obvious because of the tension in Inda’s face, the near hopelessness of his plan. Of all their positions.
Inda rocked back and forth, shoulders tight. “If Durasnir thinks that the Delfs are the main line—since they have to know we’re short, compared to them—If he gets them turned south, and then you hit—”
“Then in the confusion, you’ve got your best chance.” Fox pointed toward the mirror chart, did the spell, and waved. The Venn advanced in their arrowhead, everyone beautifully on station. That would change to a line as soon as the enemy spotted Inda’s allies hull down on the horizon. “Remember, they’ll cluster tightest around the commander. That’s been consistent. So that’s where you will find Rajnir and the Dag. At least you’ve got Jeje navigating.”
Inda snapped the map into a roll and slid it into its covers. “If anybody can get me in and out, it’s Jeje.”
He tucked the map into his waiting gear, then he made a slow tour around the deck, and once full dark had fallen, while Fox conducted an unnecessary drill aft, he got his bag and slipped over the forecastle rail to where the Vixen had slipped under Death’s lee.
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