Song of the Current

by Sarah Tolcser

  Markos straightened to his full height, his head bumping the ceiling. “Ow! Surely now that you know the truth about who I am, you can see it’s important.”

  I only saw everything I cared about going up in flames. Taking him to Casteria would mean breaking my contract. Playing with my father’s life. And for what? For Akhaia? It wasn’t even my country. For him? He’d called my wherry a piece of junk, tried to kiss me without my leave, and to dig the knife even deeper, he’d deceived me.

  “All I see is more secrets.” I shook my head. “More lies.”

  We anchored in a swampy pond off the main river, lowering the mast to better conceal Cormorant from searching eyes. From the look of the sky, the weather was going to get worse before it got better. In the dark, Fee and I draped the waxed awning over the sail to protect it from the rain.

  Markos hovered to one side of the mast.

  “Me and Fee can do it by ourselves.” I elbowed him out of the way. “Wouldn’t want you to get your hands dirty, Your Lordship.”

  “That’s actually not how you address an Emparch,” he said.

  I ignored him until he gave up and wandered off. Fee adjusted the awning, shooting me a disapproving glance.

  “What?” I jerked the ties down harder than necessary. “I expected you at least to be on my side.”

  “No sides.” She nodded at Markos’s back. He stood alone, hands in pockets, watching the rain patter on the pond. “Sad,” she said softly.

  “If he wanted me to feel bad for him,” I snapped, “he should’ve told me the truth.”

  Pulling up the hood of my oilskin coat, I made my way to the stern. Lord Peregrine had said the Black Dogs were somewhere between us and the bridge. Victorianos was scouring the riverlands for Cormorant, but we knew almost nothing about her. I didn’t even know what Diric Melanos looked like or how big a crew he had. Perhaps in a dinghy identical to the hundreds of other dinghies in these parts, I could get close enough to find something out. At the very least, I’d know where they were moored.

  Light rain fell around me, ringing the surface of the pond. A puddle was starting to gather in the keel of the dinghy. I untied the rope and clambered in, running out the oars.

  The dinghy lurched, and I almost tumbled off the seat. Looking up, I saw the rope stretched taut.

  Markos stood with a boot on the stern, eyebrows raised. In one hand he held a lantern and in the other, the rope. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I gripped the oars. “Scouting ahead.”

  “Alone?” He wrapped the rope around his hand, preventing the boat from moving. “Have you any idea how dangerous—”

  I glared at him. “I don’t need your help, Your Majesty.”

  “Also wrong,” he muttered. The hood of the oilskin jacket revealed only his profile, but his jaw was stubbornly set. “I am trying to be a gentleman. Will you please just let me?”

  “What use do I have for a gentleman?” I tapped the knife at my waist. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Oh really?” He dropped into the boat, rocking it. “What are you going to do, start another bar fight?”

  I clenched my hands around the oars. He was the very last person whose company I wanted, but I couldn’t kick him out. He was stronger than me. That part hadn’t been a lie.

  “Douse that light,” I ordered, raising my voice over the creak of the oarlocks. The dinghy glided out of the pond and into the river.

  Without the lantern, my eyes adjusted to the dark. Clouds mottled the sky, and the water was flat as a sheet of glass but for the raindrops. I gave two short strokes with the starboard oar to point the bow toward Gallos.

  Markos sat forward, drumming his fingers on the thwart. “The part I can’t figure out,” he said, “is what the Margravina’s game is.”

  Sweat dampened my neck. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, why send you?” He felt me stop rowing, and sighed. “Xanto’s balls, will you keep going? It’s not an insult. I only meant the Margravina might easily have ordered the commander to bring me to Valonikos himself. But clearly she had other priorities.”

  “I don’t presume to know,” I panted, “what the Margravina is thinking. Because obviously I’ve never met her.” How he could think about politics, when any minute we might come upon the Black Dogs, was beyond me.

  He shifted awkwardly on the seat.

  “You’ve met her.” I rolled my eyes. “Of course you have. What does she look like?”

  Markos’s lip twitched. “Like an old bat.”

  I snorted, and we shared a glance that was almost friendly. “What I don’t understand,” I said, “is how she knew you were in the box.”

  He shrugged. “Her spies, probably.”

  “She has spies in Akhaia?”

  He waved a hand. “Everyone has spies. I think she’s playing both ends against the middle,” he said thoughtfully. “Likely she wants to see if Konto is more favorable to her as Emparch than my father was. So she can decide whose claim to support.” He spat over the side of the boat. “We’ll see how she likes dealing with him. I wish her no joy in it.”

  I rowed without speaking for several minutes, lulled by the rhythm of the oars. A cloud moved over the moon, making it more difficult to see the shoreline.

  “So you’ve been running guns to rebels.” Markos hesitated. “Didn’t you ever stop to wonder what Peregrine was going to do with them?”

  “He’s a philosopher, not a fighter.” I focused on the oars as his reproachful gaze burned into me. It didn’t help. “Perhaps he just wants to defend himself.”

  “I don’t really believe you’re that naive,” he said softly. “Words can be weapons too. You’re supporting a dangerous revolutionary.”

  “It’s not my place to care what he wants the muskets for. When we run a cargo, it’s just a job,” I lied. “Nothing more.”

  “You’re sympathizers.” He was sharper than I’d given him credit for. “That’s why you and your father were smuggling the muskets.” He sounded more wistful than angry. “You hate everything I stand for.”

  “Not hate exactly …” I paused, water dripping from the end of the oar blades. “Lord Peregrine was exiled from Akhaia for writing a book about the rights of people like me. Would it really be that strange if I did sympathize?”

  It was too dark to read his expression. “If it had been Antidoros Peregrine who murdered my family, instead of Konto Theucinian, I wonder if you’d still be sitting here saying that.”

  An uneasy shock rippled through me. The truth was I’d never thought much about the consequences of those muskets. I still believed Markos was wrong about Lord Peregrine, but he was right about the guns—if people had come to harm because of them, I would be partially to blame.

  We were coming up on Gallos Bridge. I put a finger over my lips to signal for quiet.

  Looming over the dock was the cutter Victorianos, her bundled-up sails stark white against the dark sky. The rainy chill sank into my bones.

  Gallos was barely a town, just a cluster of houses around the bridge. The dock was deserted, all the boats closed up with canvas awnings to keep the rainwater out. A lone lantern dangled under the eaves of the dock inspector’s shack.

  Silently, I rowed closer. None of this was Victorianos’s fault. Indeed she was a lovely thing, with sleek, graceful lines. As we passed under her bow, I could see she was clinker-built, like Cormorant, out of curved overlapping planks. Her bowsprit loomed over my head, much bigger than it looked from across the water. If three of me lay end to end, we might be the same length as that bowsprit.

  A pool of lamplight spilled out of a porthole near her stern. It flickered, disappearing entirely, then burst back to life. Men, I realized, walking up and down in one of Victorianos’s cabins. What interested me was that the window was open, and through it I could hear voices rising and falling.

  I turned to Markos. “I’d pay a silver talent to hear what they’re saying.”

  We bobbed in th
e shadow of the dock. I half rose, peering over the other boats at the cutter’s dark hulk.

  Markos hauled me down. “If you think you’re just going to waltz down the dock into their hands, I won’t allow it.”

  “Not on the dock,” I whispered. “Under it.”

  “Isn’t that going to be disgusting?”

  “Very.”

  “As in, leeches and muck and eels?”

  “And spiders,” I said.

  He surprised me by removing his oilskin jacket. “Fine. Then I’m going with you.” As he unlaced his boots, he grinned up at me. “Someone’s got to keep you from doing something dangerous and stupid.”

  His smile went through me like a flash—I hadn’t been expecting it. Had I unfairly judged him? Certainly growing up in the Emparch’s court, he would’ve learned to conceal his feelings. Maybe the arrogance was a mask he hid behind.

  I made the boat fast to a piling. Stripping off my shoes and sweater, I placed them in a heap on the seat, oilskins on top. Then I wrapped my arms around the piling and hoisted myself onto it. Behind me, the dinghy rocked.

  My legs curled around the muck-coated post. It was, as Markos said, disgusting. There’s nothing slimier than a wooden piling that’s been in the water for twenty years. And I’d seen spiders the size of my hand under docks. Steeling myself, I dropped silently into the water.

  Hand over hand, we felt our way along the dock with only our arms and heads above water. Rain pelted the boards above us, dripping through the cracks to land with a splat on my face. The smell of mud and fish was strong.

  I wouldn’t let myself think about thinking about dock spiders.

  Presently we found ourselves even with Victorianos’s stern, where her great rudder rose up out of the water. From our vantage point under the dock, I could barely see the bottom of the porthole. Light played on the water as it lapped the pilings.

  I tapped Markos on his bare shoulder, gesturing with my chin toward the cutter. We inched closer, treading water under the porthole, just beyond the slanting lamplight. I forced my breathing to slow. The hot pounding of physical exertion faded away, and in the new quiet, I found I could understand their voices.

  “She ain’t faster than Victorianos.” I heard the clink of glasses. I bobbed closer, careful to stay in the shadow of the piling.

  “’Course she ain’t. One of you asses probably missed her when you were supposed to be on watch.”

  “I think you should tell Theucinian to go rot,” drawled the other man. “Let’s head back out to sea. These rivers are slow, and the flies are bloody murder. I vote we go back to Katabata.”

  Katabata. It sounded vaguely familiar, like I’d seen it on a chart somewhere. I filed the name away.

  “Good thing I be captain,” the first man said. “You don’t tell an Emparch to rot.”

  With that, Captain Diric Melanos crossed in front of the window, and I saw the face of our enemy at last. In profile, at least, he did look a bit dashing. He wore a brocade waistcoat and a tricorn hat, and a scar marred his cheek under his right eye. A proper pirate ought to have a pointed beard or an earring, but he had neither. Lord Peregrine had called him a brash young man. Young to him, I guess. He looked about thirty.

  “Even if I could do,” the captain said, “there’s still the matter of that one. I daren’t go against him.”

  “Ayah, he gives me the willies, and no mistake.”

  “Hush.”

  The light shifted and changed again. The men’s voices moved farther away, where I couldn’t make them out. There was a creak and a soft thump. A door closing.

  Someone else had entered the cabin.

  The voices drifted back toward us. “—Meet up with Philemon. See if he’s had any better luck.”

  I’d never heard of Philemon, but if they were on their way to meet up with him, he wasn’t on Victorianos. Did the Black Dogs have a second ship out looking for Markos? For our sake I hoped not.

  “At least we managed to burn the one anyway,” Captain Melanos said. “I reckon we should make for Casteria next.”

  “No.” The third voice was high and oily. “We need the boy.”

  I heard a sharp gasp beside me. Light shone through the cracks in the dock, striping Markos’s frozen face.

  “Cleandros,” he whispered.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  I grabbed his arm underwater. “The shadowman?”

  Markos jerked away, lips trembling with emotion or cold.

  The Emparch’s shadowman was a traitor. And he wasn’t just some hazy threat, miles away in Akhaia. He was here. He knew Markos’s face. My breath caught. We were in darker trouble than I’d ever imagined.

  “Ayah, well, we been up and down this stretch twice,” Captain Melanos was saying. “That wherry’s disappeared.”

  “I told you. They’ve passed us.” That was the oily voice Markos had named as the shadowman Cleandros.

  “How, I ask you, when we’ve twice the speed? Reckon they’re holed up somewhere. They’ll know every bedamned dike and pond along these waters.” I heard the clunk of a glass hitting the table. “Wherrymen know these things.”

  “We’ve wasted enough time. Tomorrow we go through the bridge,” Cleandros said. “We’ll look for them up the River Kars.”

  “We ought to burn these wherries, is what. Drag their wives out. Show ’em the cannons. Someone knows something.”

  “You were a fool at Hespera’s Watch,” the shadowman said. “Lighting that fire only angered every man on the river from here to Iantiporos. It was nothing but inefficient, needless waste. A gamble, and now you see what it got you. No one will tell us anything.”

  “I know that boy was there. Can’t you fish for him with your magic again?”

  “For the tenth time,” the shadowman snapped, “it won’t work. Wherever he is, he’s no longer in the box, so I can’t feel him. The magic itself is the only thing I can trace. Please cease your tiresome questions. We got the Emparchess. We’ll find him.”

  Markos stiffened with a jolt, water swirling around him.

  “What was that splash?” The shadowman’s voice carried across the water. He must have been standing at the window.

  “Frogs. Fish.” Captain Melanos sounded unconcerned.

  A beam of brighter light fell on the water between the cutter and the dock. Someone had lifted a lantern. I shrank back into the shadows, holding my breath. Fear made me grip the slippery post.

  We needed to get out of there. This wasn’t one of Pa’s stories about the bold Oresteias of long ago. This danger was real. If they caught Markos, they would murder him. Not liking someone was one thing. It didn’t mean I wanted him killed.

  At least we managed to burn the one.

  A horrible thought ricocheted through me. They didn’t mean alive, did they? I saw a beautiful lady wrapped in a silk dress, twisting and turning against the flames, banging on the inside of the box with frantic fists—

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the image from my mind. I hoped the Emparchess had been asleep when she died, like the unfortunate Singers.

  Shaking Markos, I whispered, “Come on.”

  We swam back to the other end of the dock without speaking a word.

  “My mother.” He hauled himself into the dinghy. Water trickled down his legs, pooling in the bottom of the boat. His lips were pressed together so hard the color had gone out of them. “By the lion god … I knew my father and brother were dead,” he said through chattering teeth. “But I thought—she can’t inherit the throne,” he choked. “She wasn’t even a threat to them.”

  With shaking fingers I pulled on my clothes. I was glad of my thick-knit fisherman’s sweater, for wool warms even when it’s wet.

  Markos sat with his clothes in a heap in his lap. Panicked, I seized both shoulders and shook him. “Markos. Pull yourself together.”

  The rain came down harder, falling through the beam of the lantern at the end of the dock. I shoved Pa’s oilski
n jacket at Markos. He managed to get his arms through the sleeves, moving like someone half-dead. I tugged the hood up, covering his face.

  We were stupid to ever have come here.

  I ran out the oars. On Victorianos, no one gave any sign that they had heard us. I stretched back and pulled as hard as I could. The dinghy leaped, almost lifting out of the water, as we shot away from the dock.

  Once we reached the murky dark of the opposing riverbank, I didn’t stop. I rowed so hard it sent up a swirling wake behind our stern. My heart pounded and my blood sang hot. The rain fell in torrents, trickling down the collar of my jacket and into my sleeves. The knit cap kept my ears warm, but my fingers were clammy and half-numb.

  It had been foolish to get in the water, when we had no way of getting dry. It wasn’t so bad for me, but Markos did not have the exercise to warm him. His lips looked blue as he shivered on the thwart across from me, but the rest of his face was in shadow.

  He said nothing, not even when we reached Cormorant’s hiding place. Lurching to his feet, he attempted to feed the rope through its rusted ring on the stern. He missed. The dinghy bumped the hull of the wherry.

  Fee appeared in the cockpit, eyes wide. She took the rope from Markos and tied it off so quickly her hands barely seemed to move. As he climbed over the stern, she touched his arm, concern shading her face. He shrugged her off. I watched him descend into the cabin, his hair plastered to the back of his neck.

  “We saw Victorianos,” I explained. The darkness nestled inside me seemed too big for words. I lowered my voice. “We heard them talking. It’s bad. The Black Dogs killed his mother, and the Emparch’s shadowman is in thick with those Theucinians.”

  There wasn’t much more to say. Climbing forward, I stood with my hand resting on Cormorant’s mast. Now that the danger was over, my whole body shook. I closed my eyes.

  God of my father. God of my ancestors. Carry the Emparchess on your current. Help us. Help us. Help us.

  When all was quiet except for the sprinkling rain, I strained outward with my whole being. The world became the space between my breaths. I listened so hard I thought the blood vessels in my ears might burst.