Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

  The whip master set the pace, swift and merciless. The flute-player took up the rhythm and the oars dug deep into the waves. The galley surged forward.

  If he couldn’t see where they were headed, Corrain strove to see what was going on aboard the galley. Raiders were hurrying back and forth from prow to stern and back again. Leather-wrapped bundles were being hauled up from the hold below. Armour and weapons, he soon realised. They didn’t have to row all the way to the mainland to find themselves going into battle.

  As his hauling arms slackened at the thought, the others were taken unawares. Their oar briefly faltered. An overseer’s warning was backed up with a lick of his whip to raise a welt on their innermost rower’s shoulder. The man beside Corrain growled a fierce rebuke.

  ‘Sorry,’ Corrain muttered. He concentrated on keeping a steady rhythm, using all the might in his shoulders, his back, his belly and legs, bare feet wedged against the board that jutted up from the deck.

  He had seen enough. Those Archipelagan raiders, nearly as numerous as the rowers, were armouring themselves in stiff leather cuirasses. Some carried swords, others shouldered quivers with short bows in hand.

  The whip master’s whistle mercilessly increased the pace. The strongest rowers strained to keep up with the piper. A couple of armoured Aldabreshi ran along the top of the narrow bulwark on the outboard side of the ship. A single slip and they would fall to a brutal death among the scything oars.

  The Aldabreshi didn’t fall. Instead they hauled on ropes to spread out a great expanse of cloth. It was suspended somehow from the galley’s single mast which Corrain had begun to think was only there for hanging signal flags.

  Was the awning to shield the rowers from the punishing sun? As Corrain looked up, he saw the cloth twitch. Dark silhouettes of arrows lay snagged overhead. An excruciating itch burned between his shoulder blades. If some lucky shaft tore a hole, an arrow could bury itself in his back and he wouldn’t even see it coming.

  A taste of smoke drove that fear away with worse. Corrain snatched a desperate glance over his shoulder to see if something had set the awning alight. If the galley caught fire, chained as they were to their oars, they would sit there burning alive until the waves overwhelmed the sinking vessel to drown any who’d survived that long.

  ‘Corrain? Are we dead men?’

  As the silent man’s mocking laugh drowned out Hosh’s terrified plea, Corrain caught a glimpse of what was happening up on the crowded prow. He shouted what little reassurance he could.

  ‘It’s only charcoal, Hosh. They’ve lit a brazier.’

  As he wondered why, as Hosh appealed for more answers, Corrain saw two Archipelagans hauling a barrel up from the hold and dragging it towards the prow. He risked twisting around a second time, ignoring the inboard man’s furious snarl.

  An Archipelagan reached into the barrel and took out something roughly the size and shape of a pomegranate. He reached for a wooden-handled copper spike thrust deep into the bright heart of the charcoal. Touching the glowing metal to a thick thread trailing from the pomegranate, he waited a moment to be sure it was alight. Then he hurled the thing high and hard, right over the galley’s prow towards whatever lay ahead of them.

  Sticky fire. Corrain had heard of that Archipelagan abomination, though he’d never seen it for himself.

  Before he could speculate further, the overseers’ screaming reached a new frenzy. The whip master blew rapid trills on his whistle. Before Corrain could guess what any of this meant, he was struck hard in the chest by their own oar.

  The galley had come to a complete stop amid a horrendous cacophony of splintering wood and screaming voices. The armoured men waiting in the stern charged up the walkway. From the sounds of clashing swords and agonised yells, those who’d been in the prow had already joined battle.

  Were he and Hosh unwilling partners in a corsair attack on some Caladhrian trading vessel? Even with the raiders prowling the sea lanes, trade between the mainland and Archipelago was too lucrative and too widespread to be significantly interrupted.

  Were they attacking some other Aldabreshin ship? Everyone said that southern barbarians fought each other like packs of wild dogs. If it was an Archipelagan ship, did it carry better swordsmen than their own?

  If it did, Corrain could hope that their own galley master, the whip master and his overseers would find themselves captured and burdened with chains, some token of natural justice. But if the rowers were sold on again like brute beasts brought to market, there was no knowing where he and Hosh might end up. Worse, they might be separated.

  Corrain closed his eyes amid the incomprehensible shouting. He was still alive. Hosh was still alive. As long as they were alive, they could hold fast to their oath. They could cling to the hope of one day seeing Minelas punished for his treachery.

  Wherever the wizard had gone, whatever he had done in the meantime, once he got back to the mainland, Corrain promised himself that he would hack the bastard’s head from his shoulders and piss down the bleeding stump of his neck.

  Aye, and he’d tell everyone from the eastern ocean to the western forests, from the southern shore to the northern mountains, why he’d done it. Those wizards of Hadrumal had been so virtuous and upright, swearing on the sanctity of their precious edict.

  Corrain would see them all shamed for the perfidious liars that they were.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lady Zurenne’s Withdrawing Room, Halferan Manor, Caladhria

  18th of Aft-Autumn

  In the 8th Year of Tadriol the Provident of Tormalin

  ‘LADY ZURENNE.’ MINELAS strode through the door to her private chamber without the courtesy of the most perfunctory knock. ‘I have business in Relshaz that may well occupy me to the turn of the season. While I am away, you will obey Master Starrid’s words as my own.’

  His casual gesture indicated the smirking man at his side.

  ‘Of course.’ Zurenne pulled her thread through her embroidery, careful not to let it tangle.

  This was an unlooked for respite. She would cherish every day without Minelas’s loathsome presence. Except that his return would be all the harder to bear. Stabbing the linen, she wished that the fine needle skewered the vile man’s eye.

  ‘Have any letters come for me?’ she asked offhand.

  On the far side of the table, both her daughters looked up hopefully from their own sewing. Zurenne’s sharp glance warned them to stay silent. She hid her relief as they both obediently returned to their needlework.

  ‘No, my lady, alas.’ Minelas’s regret was as insincere as always.

  Zurenne set another methodical stitch in the cloth. Still no letters, not since the end of Aft-Summer and she’d only been given those with their seals already broken, every word doubtless already read.

  No letters and, so, no news of anything beyond the manor house’s enclosing wall. The cities of Trebin and Ferl could have burned to the ground. Kevil could have been washed away by the sea and she would know nothing of it.

  Come to that, the village beyond the brook where the Halferan demesne labourers and the manor’s servants lived could have burned to the ground. She wouldn’t know about it unless she smelled the smoke on somebody’s clothes. Minelas had forbidden her to go beyond the gatehouse, after learning that she’d asked one of her husband’s pensioned-off troopers to carry a letter to her sister. She still didn’t know what the poor man’s fate had been.

  ‘Master Starrid will bring you any correspondence in my absence,’ Minelas continued briskly.

  ‘Indeed.’ Zurenne didn’t believe that for an instant. Minelas wouldn’t risk her writing some reply with an appeal hidden amid her words. He had dictated every syllable from her pen in reply to those Aft-Summer letters.

  She refused to despair. Her wits were sharper than Starrid’s and if Minelas was truly to be gone for twenty days or more, there might be some chance of her sending word to her distant family. Her brothers by marriage would see this usurper justly puni
shed when they knew the truth of what he’d done, and worse, what he’d threatened. Zurenne would go and watch him hanged and she’d ignore any disapproving whispers at such unseemly behaviour in a wife and mother.

  She steeled herself to look up at Minelas, all innocent enquiry. ‘May I ask what your business in Relshaz is?’

  ‘Your business is your children and household, my lady.’ His pale blue eyes hardened with voiceless threat. ‘Nothing else need concern you.’

  ‘Of course.’ Zurenne looked down at her embroidery again.

  He didn’t look like a villain, this stranger who’d turned the manor she’d come to as a bride into a prison for her widowhood. He was slender and handsome with golden hair, seldom seen in these regions. But those fine features were a mask for depravity that Zurenne hadn’t imagined possible.

  What wickedness had he wrought elsewhere? Who else was hunting him, intent on bloody vengeance? That was the explanation, Zurenne had concluded, for him hiding out here in this remote barony on Caladhria’s western coast. Since that darkest day when he’d come to tell her that her life was ruined, that her beloved husband was dead, he’d only left to attend the Summer Solstice Parliament. He’d had to do that to secure his false claim on the Halferan estates and to present affidavits from the neighbouring lords of Tallat and Karpis that they had no objection to his grant of guardianship.

  Zurenne focused fiercely on her stitches. Halferan had been the truest love of her life, save only for their daughters. He had sworn to protect and to cherish her when they wed and she’d never had cause to doubt him. In every crisis, she had turned to him. Whatever challenges arose, he met them.

  That didn’t lessen her rage at him for dying. For dying after he’d brought this man among them. Who was this Minelas of Grynth, with his promises and deceits? As sly and destructive as a fox in a henhouse.

  Halferan had only said the mysterious newcomer knew how to defeat the corsairs. Zurenne need no longer worry about the raids on their coast each summer, the plundering of helpless villages, their tenants left homeless and hungry even if they managed to escape the slavers’ chains.

  She need not concern herself with the details. It was a lord’s duty to protect his family, his home and his people while it was her wifely duty to ensure his comfort, to manage his household, to nurture and educate his children.

  So Zurenne had done as she had always been taught. Now that unquestioning loyalty saw her a prisoner in her own home, subject to the whims of a stranger and insulted by insolent servants whom she couldn’t dismiss.

  She looked over at Starrid, as if struck by a sudden thought. ‘You must give Master Minelas a cage of courier doves. So he can send us any urgent word. So he can give you a day’s warning to make ready for his return.’

  The stocky man’s fleshy face coloured unattractively. ‘I, that is to say, Master Minelas—’ His apology foundered in confusion.

  Minelas waved that away. ‘I have no need of courier doves.’

  Zurenne sighed and gazed at Starrid as though saddened and disappointed.

  ‘Courier doves are none of your concern,’ the steward said brusquely.

  ‘Indeed.’ She returned her attention meekly to her sewing.

  Looking up through her eyelashes, she saw Starrid was looking uneasily after Minelas as the blond man prowled the room, picking up music from the clavichord, closing the marquetry lid on its honeywood and ebony keys. Now he was rearranging the dried flowers on the mantel shelf. He did this every time he came, uninvited, to her apartments, to underline his mastery of every aspect of her life.

  How did Starrid stifle his conscience, knowing he’d betrayed his dead lord so foully? After all the chances which Halferan had given him, to make good on his persistent failures. Inability to manage the courier bird loft up above the manor steward’s dwelling was merely one of the man’s inadequacies. Was he worrying now, lest Master Minelas prove less merciful?

  Zurenne contemplated her embroidery. If she sought to remind Starrid of his guilt, she didn’t spare herself. She bore her own share of blame. She hadn’t thought to question Minelas, on that first appalling day when he’d brought her husband’s body home.

  Racked with weeping, she couldn’t compose a single rational thought. Even after all this time, she couldn’t comprehend the disaster that had befallen them.

  Halferan had ridden out such a short time before with a full troop of his household guards, well armed and armoured. Whenever the manor gates had opened, all that day and the next, she expected to see him ride in, anxious to explain away this foolish misunderstanding.

  But the sun had set and risen again and still he didn’t come. Finally Zurenne had struggled to explain his absence to their daughters. Saying it aloud, that their adored father was dead, it had felt like a lie. She even prepared her apologies for distressing them so, when it proved to be nonsense.

  But it was very far from nonsense, with his body laid on a funeral pyre outside the manor’s wall by the brook. With the widows and orphans of the dead troopers lamenting beside her, even those who had no body to burn. At least Zurenne could hope for the consolation of Saedrin’s mercy, as the greatest of the gods opened the door to the Otherworld to allow her beloved husband rebirth in that unknown realm.

  ‘Show me your work, girls,’ Minelas ordered.

  Zurenne set another precise stitch, her lips pressed together. Though it burned like acid, she must keep her wrath hidden for fear of making their parlous situation worse.

  Looking up, she saw him standing between her daughters, his elegant hands hovering as if about to caress their shoulders. Zurenne stiffened with fear.

  ‘Mama?’ On the far side of the sewing table, Ilysh held up a cambric kerchief, its central design steadily gaining a border of maidenstars. An entirely suitable flower for a girl on the threshold of womanhood.

  ‘That’s lovely, my darling.’ Zurenne forced genuine warmth into her words. Maiden and mother bless them, her girls had little enough to brighten their days.

  ‘And mine?’ Esnina anxiously held up a grubby square adorned with half a yellow butterfly.

  Zurenne hardened her heart. ‘You must be more gentle, my darling. See how you’re pulling the thread so tight that it puckers the cloth?’

  Maiden and mother help them, her daughters had to learn a good wife’s skills, if they were ever to make a marriage to escape this incarceration. If Minelas would ever allow it and risk whatever he sought to hide here somehow coming to light. If he hadn’t already made good on those threats that curdled Zurenne with terror.

  ‘That’s very pretty, Neeny.’ The monster smiled down at the little girl, all solicitude.

  He had been just as kind and attentive, steadying Zurenne’s shaking hand when she carried the burning brand to set Halferan’s oil-drenched pyre alight. Choking on her tears, she had silently blessed this stranger for his generous tributes to her lost beloved, his words carried by the wind to the assembled household. She could not have spoken, incoherent with regret for loving words unsaid, for misunderstandings never to be resolved, for their shared future now lost.

  Zurenne’s only duty, Minelas had declared, was comforting her bereaved daughters and honouring her husband’s memory. He would see to the manor’s continued good governance, to the needs of the demesne and the broad swath of the barony beyond with its tenants and farms. When the barons gathered for the Summer Solstice Parliament, he would speak up for their interests. These were a man’s burdens to shoulder.

  She had been so relieved. How grievously her lifetime’s instincts betrayed her. She’d never dreamed he would claim formal guardianship. But Minelas had done just that. After all, he had the late Baron Halferan’s own signature on that last testament of his wishes in the event of his death.

  Zurenne knew that parchment for a forgery without even having to see it. Halferan would never have set his signature and seal to such a thing. But she had no way to prove it. She couldn’t even see the document to challenge her husband�
��s supposed penmanship. A mere woman had no right to petition the parliament of barons; no standing to challenge Minelas’s standing as arbiter of her fate and that of Halferan’s orphaned daughters.

  No right to inspect the ledgers detailing the revenues and commerce of the barony. No chance to see how much of her daughters’ inheritance the scoundrel was squandering on finery like today’s cobalt blue jerkin of finest velvet, sapphire-studded links in the cuffs of his shirt.

  How much had Minelas paid for Lord Karpis’s sanction for those false documents, to stop Baron Tallat challenging him? Or had he shared whatever secret he had to defend them from the corsairs? If he had such a secret.

  Summer had come and gone and with it, presumably, the annual plague of raiders from the sea. Without any news from outside, Zurenne had no way of knowing how bad their depredations had been. The manor itself was ten leagues from the coast, too far to be threatened directly.

  She spoke up to draw Minelas’s attention away from her children. ‘I wish you a safe and comfortable journey, particularly at this season.’

  They weren’t long into Aft-Autumn but the roads would already be deteriorating along with the weather and they would only get worse by For-Winter.

  ‘Thank you, and indeed, I must set off if I’m to make the most of the day on the road.’ He rubbed his hands together, betraying some secret amusement.

  ‘Good speed to you.’ Zurenne smiled to hide her growing curiosity. Why was Minelas going to Relshaz? To spend his ill-gotten gains on whatever vices he cherished behind that handsome, trustworthy face? He couldn’t indulge them here without everyone knowing him for the fiend he was.

  He walked towards the door, pausing on the threshold for one last smile at her daughters. ‘Be good girls for your mother and for Master Starrid, and perhaps I’ll bring you some presents.’