“If I may,” the Masran priest said. His arrogance was mostly gone, replaced by seasickness and an oppression of responsibility. “The… artifact I guard is literally the only shield we have. And I must insist that its preservation be always the first priority, because its loss or capture would immediately spell the end…”
Inoques raised her eyes. “Would it, though?” she asked quietly.
Haras would not look at her. “And I protest her presence. Its presence. It is a tool of my Order—a weapon. But it is not to be trusted—I protested its inclusion on this mission.” He spoke without anger; he sounded tired. “It is using sex to gain your confidence,” he said to Aranthur.
“I am not ‘it,’ priest,” Inoques said. “I am currently ‘her.’ Keep a civil tongue in your head.”
The weather Magos winced. “What are you, Myr?”
“It is a construct. Something that should not be!” Haras spat.
Inoques rolled her eyes like an outraged adolescent.
“I am what I am. I saved you all in the fight on the river, and I have—” she smiled salaciously at Aranthur—“other commitments to you now.”
Aranthur spread his hands and looked at Myr Comnas. Her eyes encouraged him.
“Can we move on?” He wondered where the soft steel in his voice came from. The voice of command, Vilna called it. But he looked around. “I think we have no choice but to trust Myr Inoques, and for my part—”
“You married her,” Dahlia said. She laughed.
Haras looked stricken. “You what?”
Aranthur blushed. But Inoques laughed her rich laugh. She accepted a beautiful Muranese glass of white wine from the steward, lay back, and glanced at Haras.
“Relax, priest. I am bound by oath. Marriage is as sacred to my kind as yours. And even if I were not…” She shrugged. “I am already bound like a slave by your priests. And again, even if I were not, here, in this case, against this enemy, I would aid you.”
“It is manipulating us—” Haras said.
“You all manipulate each other constantly,” Inoques said. “I play by your own rules.”
“Enough,” Comnas said. “You are some sort of bound demon?”
Inoques shrugged. “Untrue, but sufficient as an explanation.”
Aranthur, who observed things, blinked.
“You are bound to the Black Stone?”
She smiled bitterly. “How astute of you.”
“You are one of the Old Ones?” Ectore asked.
Haras looked away.
Aranthur looked at Dahlia.
“I can guess. So… This is not the first time the Old Ones have tried to escape from the gate, am I correct?” He looked at Haras, who looked away. “And at some point, your order found a way to capture pieces of them and bind them to bodies. To create superbly powerful Magi who were nonetheless utterly under the control of the priests.”
“Not utterly,” Inoques smiled.
“Mistakes were made in old administrations,” Haras said.
“Draxos’ dick, as my father used to say.” Comnas shook her head.
“I just want to note in passing that our ‘side’ appears to indulge in some fairly dark practices.” Aranthur looked at Haras.
Haras shook his head vehemently. “You have no idea what pressures are on us, you soft northerners. You do not have to keep the dead in their graves. You do not have these ancient things crawling through your dreams like maggots…”
Aranthur watched Haras, keeping himself in check as he would if a gate guard was searching him. But inwardly he felt loathing; inwardly he was experiencing the same doubts that he had felt when he confronted Tiy Drako. But still…
“Can we move on?” he asked. “Haras, I have heard you. But Inoques…”
Dahlia laughed, and put a hand on Inoques’ shoulder. The bound woman smiled a very human smile.
Aranthur shrugged. “Perhaps I have a special interest.”
Comnas laughed too. “I agree. I’ve only known the captain for a few hours and I say, move on.”
Haras shook his head. “You will rue this. It is not a person.”
“Noted.” Aranthur didn’t like Haras, and yet he understood the man all too well—and the weight of his responsibilities. And the narrowness of his experience. “Can we decide anything before we raise Antioke?”
Sasan turned from the rail. “If al-Dun and ai Faryd will support me, I will go to Safi from Antioke.”
Val al-Dun stood with his arms crossed, rolling with the ship. The swell was growing, as if there was a major storm somewhere in the west.
“I am not a hero.” He shrugged. “If you go home and raise your banner, everyone who follows you will die.”
Kati looked at Aranthur. He smiled at her.
“It’s a long way from a garret room in the Academy,” he said.
“As soon as I saw you,” Kati said, “I thought, ‘Now I can go back to the Academy, and all this will be a bad dream.’”
Aranthur looked at them all, still wondering why he, and not, say, Captain Comnas, seemed to be in charge of the discussion. And in his mind he was struggling with even the simplest decisions. It appeared to him that events in Megara demanded Dahlia—and that the work on the Safiri grimoire, the Ulmaghest, required Kati. But that was not his secret.
He hadn’t shaved in days, and that gave him a short beard to run his fingers through.
“Sasan, I think we need to at least see Megara before you launch an expedition into Safi.”
His friend gave him the “this from you” glare.
“That is not the tune you sang two nights ago,” he said. “I will ride east from Antioke, regardless of who joins me.”
Dahlia bit her lip.
I’m not good at this, Aranthur thought.
The sea remained utterly empty. They had a two-day blow from the east—a wind so strong it carried the scent of the birch forests of the south continents. A flock of seabirds took shelter in the great galley’s rigging.
Inoques spent the whole day and night on deck. She seemed able to work forever, without fatigue, without diminution. Aranthur wasn’t quite sure how to approach the reality that his “wife” was one of the Apep-Duat, like the arms attacking the city of Al-Khaire. For the most part, he tried to ignore it. As the wind abated and he no longer needed a lifeline to survive on the trabaccolo foredeck, he went topside with a wooden mug of warmed wine for her.
She drank it off. At a glance, Aranthur could see the enormous power that was bound within her—and could also see the web of weather-workings and protections she had woven over her ship. Off to the west, the great galley hung, invisible in the darkness, but visible to his magesight as a web of puissance that strengthened sails and calmed the howling winds, or deflected them.
“He’s very good,” she said. “The weather Magos, Ectore.” She drank the wine off. “We have been co-operating these last hours—you people are very good.”
“Humans?” Aranthur asked.
She grinned, kissed him, and then stepped back.
“No. Those of you who learn in the Studion.” She nodded. A patch of cloud whirled away, revealing stars. “It is almost over.”
“That wasn’t so bad.”
She looked at the helm, and then forward. “You think so? Listen, the sea can always kill you. Or me, for that matter.”
She was looking up, and he followed her eyes; the Dark Forge was gradually revealed by the retreating cloud.
Larger.
Aranthur groaned.
“Can I tell you something?” Inoques asked. “If you have power, it is always like this. The sea is the perfect model. There is no time that the sea cannot kill you. A gust of wind on a beautiful day—a squall—and your ship is laid on her beam ends, and everyone aboard drowns. Or a storm, or insufficient fresh water, a leak, dry rot…” She shrugged. “And so, with power. Someone is always trying to conquer. The multiverse itself is fraught with perils equivalent to storms, and there’s no malevolence involved.
And then every sentient race is well stocked with arsehats craving dominance and fools to follow them.”
“So…” Aranthur looked at her, trying to read her expression through tattoos and darkness.
“So, if you still fancy me, I’d like to make love, and enjoy this body, and you.” She pointed at the Dark Forge. “That will be there in an hour, whether we mate or not.”
“Can we defeat it?”
She shrugged. “You know that I am basically a slave. And slaves learn fatalism.”
“You are no slave.”
“You may be surprised. You may be surprised at what I am. But know, too, that I like you, and come what may, I will not harm you or your friends.”
“I suppose you mean that as love talk?”
She laughed. “Damn it, Aranthur. You are deeper than I thought. You grow on me.”
Aranthur found that he was very easy with her, despite what he knew. So he made the same quip his father often made when his mother complained about something.
“You married me.”
Antioke rose with the dawn. The sun rising in the east silhouetted her truncated towers and the soaring majesty of her ancient Temple of Light. Well off the port, a low string of islands with little white towns, stained pink by the rising sun.
Aranthur raised his magesight as soon as the orb of the sun was clear of the horizon.
“No fleet,” he said. He had hoped, very hard, to find the Imperial Fleet in the secure harbour of Antioke. “But a lot of small stuff in those island ports. Black sails.”
“Pirates,” Inoques said. “Killikans.” She looked at the veritable forest of black masts.
“The Rei d’Asturas is beating to quarters,” Mera, the mate, called.
Captain Inoques had dressed in Byzas clothes after they made love: breeches, a fine shirt, a sash and a magnificent waistcoat cut for a woman. She looked more like a pirate than an Imperial officer.
“The Imperial Lady seems to know her business. Let’s follow suit.”
“You have guns?” Aranthur asked.
“We have one big gun each side amidships. But they take an hour to get into place, and—” She was looking up. “Where away?” she screamed to the masthead.
Above her, a slim woman was waving to the west.
There followed a long exchange in Masri.
“I’ll be getting the guns into their cradles,” she said. “Aranthur, can you get Kallotronis and Vilna to… man my guns?”
“Can’t you just sink things with your dread sorcery?”
Aranthur had decided that a little humour was required in dealing with his wife, the demon.
“I can, but it takes energy and concentration and all the usual things. And I love the smell of the powder.” She smiled.
Aranthur spent the next hour with Mera and Omga and a dozen other men, moving the heavy bronze tubes carefully to the right place where they could be swayed up out of the hold and into the gun carriages that the carpenter assembled at the low-slung gun ports. But as a piece of the deck was folded away on smoothly oiled hinges to reveal the gun positions, he understood that the guns were too big to remain on deck all the time—useless or worse in a storm or a heavy blow.
It took an hour, and a lot of sweat, but the guns were up, and with them, powder, shot, shot wads, and all the tools, rammers and scoops and sponges to swab; buckets of seawater; quills full of powder for priming.
The guns fired marble balls, each one hand-chipped to round. Aranthur was unsurprised to find that every ball had a deeply carved mark, and was latent with sihr.
He came up on deck, stripped to the waist, with Kallotronis behind him.
“Ready, captain,” he called.
Antioke was fully visible, perhaps four sea-miles off the starboard bow. The rise of the hills behind the town was now visible, as were the scars of the recent siege.
And the smoke.
“Darkness,” spat Kallotronis.
Inoques turned around. “I’ve seen a few wars. I’d say that was an army.”
Aranthur tried to make sense of what he was seeing. His first assumption was that his information had been wrong, and that the city was still under siege by Imperial forces. He was vaguely aware that Myr Elena Kallinikas had gone to serve in the siege of Antioke, for example. And General Tribane had referred to the expedition several times.
But the Lion and Eagle was clearly visible in the far-seer, over the citadel, which also bore the scars of a siege.
Aranthur watched for a while and shook his head.
“We hold the city,” he said.
“Unless the flags are false,” Inoques said.
The eastern horizon was now nicked with sails—a dozen or more. Coming out of the little fishing ports on the islands.
“Small ships. Like mine.” Inoques was watching the shore to the north. “And it looks like two more are coming out.”
Aranthur continued watching.
“We have to decide soon—into the port, or back out to sea and try and leave those bastards behind. I don’t like them,” Inoques said. “It looks to me as if we are running a blockade.”
Aranthur moved his volteia back and forth, watching the beaches.
“Lay me alongside the Rei d’Asturas,” Inoques said to her helmswoman.
One of the trabaccolo’s guns fired. Kallotronis waved.
“Practice!” he called.
“Gods, I love the smoke. Best thing humans ever invented,” Inoques said. “Myr Comnas!” she bellowed.
One of the effects of her strange dual nature was that her voice was enormous.
The stern gallery of the great galley towered over them like a palace above a hovel. Myr Comnas’ greying black hair appeared over the side, framing a very worried face.
“Run for the sea or the port?” Inoques bellowed.
“Guns on the headland!” Comnas shouted down.
Two sailors with boarding pikes poled the trabaccolo off from a near collision.
“Mind your helm,” snapped Inoques.
“There’s a current, ma’am,” said the helmswoman.
Aranthur began a working. It was so complicated; in effect, it was a far-seer occulta with gongs and whistles. But he was trying something new, and he’d had days at sea to build himself a glyph. He unrolled it out of his private Aulos and wrote it on the crystal wind, and he was looking at Dahlia. She was upside down.
“Fuck,” he said.
She laughed. “Timos? Where are you?”
He closed the occulta and tried again.
The image was still upside down. He projected a tablet of light and wrote a message on it.
Dahlia understood immediately.
“Inoques?” Aranthur said a moment later. The exchange in the Aulos had been very rapid, and Dahlia had corrected his misrepresentation of some matter of optics. He re-inscribed his glyph. “Captain?”
She glanced over and saw a life-sized representation of the Imperial captain floating on the deck.
She smiled at Aranthur. “You people are so inventive.”
She had to speak to one side, so that the two captains appeared to be speaking at angles, but the occulta worked—a two-way communication device between two Magi, line of sight only. Castable almost instantaneously.
“Stand off,” Inoques snapped, as they scraped a finger’s width of paint and wood off the Rei d’Asturas.
“I cannot risk my cargo,” Comnas was saying. “Except that truly, it’s a risk either way.”
“Why don’t we know anything?” Inoques asked.
Aranthur spoke quietly to her. “There’s no sihr in the city or the citadel. None I can find readily. Lots of death.” He looked at her. “My people hold the city. I’d wager on that.”
“We are wagering,” she said. “Myr Comnas, my bet is the port.”
“Those ships coming in from seaward look like blockaders,” Comnas said. “How do we ever escape?”
“Sixteen sails!” called the masthead. “Make that seventeen!”
>
“We can’t take them all,” Comnas said. “Port it is. I’ll lead the way—if it’s a fight, I’ve got the weight of metal.”
The closer to the port they came, the more obvious it was that there was an army moving into siege positions around the city. They had seized the low hills and the long sand spit that led to the stone fort that guarded the harbour entrance, squat and deadly, but the Imperial flag flew from it and the hasty trenches of the sand spit were being reinforced by cut logs. In fact, it appeared that the sea fort’s attackers had just arrived.
“The Pure,” Aranthur said, after he’d seen two of their milk-white flags and a scarlet-cloaked Exalted. He passed his thoughts to Dahlia.
“We’re going to pound the sand spit as we pass,” she told him.
He passed that to the captain.
“Excellent,” she said. “Colours—Masr, and an Imperial Lion under our flag.”
Mera saluted and the Golden Sphinx of Masr on a black background flew up the halyards and broke over the ship. The great galley seemed to blossom—six banners, including a huge swallowtail that had its own spar.
The fort dipped its colours and ran up a black wooden ball.
The great galley raised two blue pennons and a black wooden triangle.
The colours on the fort dipped again, and three wooden triangles ran up.
“That’s the current signal,” Dahlia said. “Myr Comnas says her codes are twenty-four days old. But that was all correct.”
Aranthur passed this to Inoques.
“Codes,” she said. “You people. In we go, then.”
The mouth of the outer harbour was almost a mile wide, with big forts on either headland. The sea went from dark and blue to light as they passed over the ancient river bar. Then they could see the bottom; kelp, rocks, and shoals of fish flowed by under the pale blue sea in the brilliant sunlight.
“Tell Kallotronis to fire whenever he wishes,” Inoques said.
Aranthur ran down the deck and passed the order. Everyone else seemed to be doing something.
Dark Forge Page 30
