"It doesn't matter how many we outnumber them by," I said wearily, "as long as we outnumber them. Anyway, they could just as well be traders or fishermen—there's no evidence that they're hostile."
"It's safer to be suspicious," said Shree, exchanging a meaningful glance with Chasco.
I squinted at the northern horizon. "I still can't see them, you know. Are you sure they're still there?"
"They've changed course," said Chasco, peering keenly towards the north. "They're moving parallel with us now. Checking our strength, maybe. What do you think, Lord Shree?" He didn't bother to ask what I thought.
"Perhaps," I said evenly, "they're innocent traders who think that we're dangerous, and they're sensibly keeping out of our way."
"Perhaps," said Shree.
"Perhaps," echoed Chasco. This time, I got the feeling they were avoiding giving each other significant glances. They were humouring me.
"What's going on?" I demanded. "Are you two holding something back?"
"No, Tig," said Shree.
"No, Lord Tigrallef," said Chasco. It was as close as he could bring himself so far to calling me by name. I sat up, all primed and bursting with difficult questions, when I was interrupted by shouts from the rigging. Looking overhead, we saw that a dozen or so sailors had climbed the shrouds and were doing complicated and probably useful things in the webbing of lines strung high on the upper masts.
Chasco peered up thoughtfully. "That's interesting. They're preparing to put on more sail. I'd have thought we were carrying enough for this sea."
"How do you know so much about it?"
"I used to be a sailor, Lord Tigrallef."
"Did you, now? I'd never have taken you for the sailor type. When was that?"
"After the Web disbanded, before I joined the Guard. I sailed for two years on a windcatcher like this one, only smaller, one of the first trading vessels out of Malvi after the liberation."
"So that's when you gained your sea-belly."
"Yes, Lord Tigrallef."
More shouts from above; but this time when we looked up, we saw they were not from the sailors playing catch-me in the rigging, but from the lookout in his cage at the top of the mid-foremast. He was shaking the bars of the cage, stabbing his arm towards the north again, and bawling out a number. Seventeen.
We scrambled to our feet and ran to the rail. "There!" Shree exclaimed, pointing. I still couldn't see anything but a grey blur, but Chasco nodded and made a smooth, unconscious gesture towards the knife in his belt-sheath.
"What is it? What does he mean, seventeen?"
"Seventeen ships," murmured Shree, "just on the horizon. I make it only fifteen, but I bet he's right. He can see further up there."
"Pirates?"
"Not likely," said Chasco. "Pirates never travel in such large packs, and they feed mostly on lone sheep. How many are we?"
"Twelve, if you count that limping old longship that Tig's brother sent along; ten good fighting ships, anyway. No pirate would attack a convoy this big even if they outnumbered it."
"Then they're not pirates." Chasco nodded as if his darkest suspicions were being confirmed. "What do you think? Grisot? Tata? We'll see the colours when they come closer."
I was feeling left out again. "Why Grisot? We're not at war with them—yet—and it's too late for them to scuttle the alliance. If anything, an attack on us would only make the alliance stronger, give the three nations a common cause. The Grisotin may be barbarians, but they're not stupid."
Shree put his back to the rail and gazed at me grimly. His eyes were narrow, hard and shiny, and he'd never looked more like an archetypal Sherkin maniac. "Certainly, Tig, it's too late for them to prevent the alliance. Certainly, attacking the nuptial ship would invite the vengeance of Miishel and Sathelforn and Gil. So what? Maybe the Grisotin are more worried about something else. Maybe their spies tell them there's something on this ship that's worth the risk."
I didn't like the way they were looking at me. "What did you have in mind?"
They glanced at each other.
Chasco raised his eyebrows a hair's-width at Shree. Shree shook his head at Chasco by the fraction of a hair's-width.
But they both jumped a foot when I pounded my fist on the rail.
"Will you two stop that? I'm not blind at this range, you know. I can see you're hiding something."
In the awkward pause that followed, the lookout on the mast bellowed a name that temporarily froze every Miisheli in sight. "Grisot! Grisoti colours!" A second later, the Tasiil was resounding with warcries, echoed lustily across the water by every Miisheli ship in the fleet. The deck shook with the pounding of feet below and moments later a horde of troopers swarmed up the companionway from the barracks in the depths of the ship, some of them still belting on their battle-skins. Every face was shining with the pleasant anticipation of mayhem.
Raising his voice over the din, Chasco said calmly, "I think you'd better tell him what you told me."
"Perhaps it is time," Shree answered, his face thoughtful. "He should be prepared. Let's get off this deck, Tig, we'll only be trampled if we stay here."
* * *
13
WE SAT IN a row against the wall of the little temple, me in the middle, our feet straight out in front of us. We had a good view from there of the approaching Grisoti fleet, which even I could discern now as individual grey blobs tossing on the swell about halfway to the horizon. Below us on the lower foredeck, bright-eyed Miisheli troopers were setting up rows of gaunt flame-slings and lethal metal-sprung spearchuckers and draping anti-boarding nets, inwoven with thousands of glittering hooks, over the rail.
"They're enjoying themselves," I said with disgust.
"Of course they are. There was a time I'd have felt the same." Shree pulled out his silver flask and offered it around. "I think you'd better have some," he said when I waved it away. "You're not going to like what I have to tell you."
"Just tell me."
He sat up poker-straight, nursing his flask in both hands. "You're going to hate it."
"Go on, tell me. I'll love it, I promise." I grinned at him to show how much I'd love it.
He looked gravely back at me. "It has to do with the Lady in Gil."
"The Lady in Gil?" I laughed. "The Lady is gone, Shree, I destroyed her myself, six years ago, and threw the fragments into the sea. You watched me do it."
"I saw you break a piece of glass."
I took a moment to absorb this, then grabbed his shoulder so suddenly that he flinched. His flask tilted, spilling a few drops of fith-liquor on to his tunic. "What are you saying, you fishbrain? That so-called piece of glass was the Lady."
Very deliberately, he rubbed the spilled liquor into his tunic, in the full knowledge that it would eat little holes in the fabric. "I saw you catch fire and not burn."
"That's—"
"Shut up, Tig. Let me speak. I saw you break a piece of glass. I saw you catch fire and not burn."
"You said that already."
He ignored me. "I saw the fire sucked in through your pores. I saw your bones outlined like your body was an alabaster pot with a light shining through it, and I also saw your heart beating. It looked like a fist clenching and unclenching."
"This is a joke, right?"
"It's no joke. Like it or not, that's what happened. And then the light faded, and you were still breathing and looking reasonably human, so I woke you up."
I held out my hand for the flask, and took a long swallow. "So the Lady's destruction was accompanied by some interesting and unexplained magico-physical phenomena. So what?" I took a defiant pull at the flask and erupted into coughs as the liquor burned down the wrong passage. Shree pounded me on the back.
"I'll tell you what. I wasn't sure what it meant at the time, so I said nothing about it. I didn't know if it meant anything. But I've lived with you for six years since then, and all that time I've been watching you and wondering about it, even though you never seemed anything but hum
an, sometimes too tupping human. But after what I've seen in the last couple of months, I'd bet you six Calloonic tablets against a Lucian scroll that you didn't destroy the Lady at all."
"You saw me do it," I said patiently.
"I saw you break a piece of glass," he said, less patiently. "I saw you catch fire and not burn. You destroyed the vessel the Lady was lodged in, Tig, that's as sure as breath and death—but as for the power that was known as the Lady in Gil—"
"Stop, Shree. Don't say it."
"—maybe she couldn't be destroyed—maybe she went into something else—another vessel—"
"She went to the bottom of the sea," I said, but not very firmly. As he was talking, something peculiar had started happening inside my head. I was remembering the shock that went up my arm when the Lady cracked, the pit of darkness that opened under me; the horror at the magnitude of my crime, so many deaths, the innocent along with the guilty, so much blood. More blood today, I thought with a stab of revulsion, listening to the click-clack of the spears being slotted into the spearchuckers.
Shree was staring at me with fiery intensity. "Listen to what I'm saying, Tig. Think of the Frath Minor, the one who was squeezed out on top of you like a sponge full of blood. What were you dreaming about when that happened?"
"The usual," I said, increasingly distracted by events inside my brain. Golden dust-motes were gathering at the edges of my vision.
"The attack at the Fiery Hand—you took some blows to the head that should have crushed your skull like a rotten pikcherry, but you didn't even bleed, you walked away with no more than a headache."
"A terrible headache," I amended absently. I could hardly see him now for the haze of gold in front of his face. I squinted past him at the far-off Grisoti fleet, found I could see them perfectly, detailed miniature war-galleys and rammers, trailing battle-flags, at the end of an infinitely long golden tube.
"And another thing—the taster died."
"Hmmm? Who died?"
"The taster, Tig. In agony, on your nuptial day. A slow-acting poison—where was the poison, Chasco?"
"The diced whale balls."
"That's right—of which the taster ate one, and you ate two or three."
"Four, I think," I corrected him. Nothing he was saying seemed very important.
"Four of them! Great Raksh! That should have killed you four times over! And while we're on the subject, you haven't had so much as a day's illness in six years, not even when the selti plagues came and Angel and I were squitting blood for a week; and why didn't you get seasick the other night, when the rest of us drylanders were laid out flat on our arses? It's not natural, Tig!"
A small part of me was listening tolerantly to Shree's spate. The larger part was watching the Grisoti fleet and the exultant preparations on the lower foredeck, and thinking, more blood; so much spilled already, and these spike-happy barbarian louts were panting to spill more. Somebody should stop them. The gold was rippling now, like molten metal in a jeweller's pan.
"But the clincher is how valuable you are suddenly—valuable enough for Miishel to pay a double dowry to have you, and for Raksh knows how many attempts on your life to stop them having you; and now, suddenly, the Grisoti fleet coming down on us like a pack of wolves, for no reason I can see except maybe that you're on board. They know, Tig. Somehow they know."
"Know what?" I got up and strolled towards the rail. Silence behind me, then the sound of four knees cracking as their owners leapt after me. I stood at the rail watching the spears being primed in the spearchuckers, the sulphur-pitch for the flame bolts being heated in a massive bronze cauldron over a portable fire. More blood. I shut my eyes.
Shree was yammering at me again, Chasco was clutching my arm as if he thought I intended leaping overboard with my boots on, but I ignored them. I opened my eyes and looked back at the western horizon and was not surprised to see a great cloud forming there, growing massive, piling itself up, the colour of cold iron with a dull red glow at its heart, roiling and billowing as it began to sweep towards us on a front broad enough to engulf both fleets, driving the sea before it, lightning standing out against the grey like swollen veins under a giant's skin. Shree was still babbling. He hadn't seen it yet.
"I think we should go below," I said to him, cutting into some nonsense about the Lady and the Lady's new receptacle. "There's a nasty blow heading our way." My body tingled; the golden motes danced in front of my eyes.
Shree looked beyond me and saw the storm. His face blanched. "Raksh! Where did that come from? The sky was clear a moment ago."
The troopers had seen it, too. There was a groan from the foredeck. Orders were given. Somebody stomped out the fire under the cauldron. Others, looking bitter, hurried to dismantle the spearchuckers.
"Can't play games in a storm, eh? Not good for the toys, I imagine." I chuckled. Chasco and Shree looked at me soberly, and then at each other, and then turned to gaze with disbelief at the moving mountain of cloud. It was coming up fast—already the sea was rising around us in angry peaks and the sailors were rushing about in the rigging like demented monkeys, securing the sails.
Shree turned and faced me squarely and threw his words at me like punches. "Is this your doing?"
"How could it be? I'm only a man like you, only not as strong." I laughed softly. "What were we talking about? Never mind, tell me later, I should go down to see that my lovely Rinn is well wedged into her pallet."
I left them frozen at the railing, and hummed softly to myself as I trotted aft towards the royal suite. More blood? Not today, there wouldn't be. I grinned as the Tasiil rolled sickeningly under the first assault of the winds. No blood today.
The salon was empty but showed signs of hasty abandonment, gambling sticks scattered over the floor, a smashed beaker, a decanter on its side rolling back and forth across the table trailing a dark stream of wine behind it. A cloak I recognized as the Frath Major's was getting thoroughly wet. I laughed out loud.
But as I reached the door that led to Rinn's boudoir, the last of the golden haze vanished as suddenly as a candle snuffed in a bucket, taking my elation with it. All at once I was myself again, drained and shaken, with the door handle in my hand and nothing much in my head but an ache of doom and the echo of Shree's ridiculous revelation.
I saw you break a piece of glass. I saw you catch fire and not burn.
I shook myself. It was nonsense. I started to turn the handle.
Very sudden, this storm. Odd how it came just when you wanted it.
My hand dropped from the handle. That was a voice I'd heard at least once before.
Not the first time that golden fog's showed up, either. Remember on the mountaintop—
Voices far off down the corridor, approaching the salon: Shree and Chasco. I didn't want to see them. I sprinted back through the salon and into the transverse corridor just before they turned the corner and made for the companionway to the afterdeck. They passed by without seeing me and vanished into the salon.
The afterdeck was empty, battered by the wind, drenched by fountains of spray crashing over the taffrail. These were only the advance squalls; the main body of the storm reared out of the sea maybe ten minutes behind us. I lashed myself to a stanchion in the shelter of the deckhouse and settled down to think.
I had destroyed the Lady. I had destroyed her, and then I had thrown her damnable sherds over the side of the Gilgard, into the sea. As for what Shree thought he saw that fateful morning, he had simply partaken too freely of the contents of his little silver flask, or had hallucinated in the thin air on the Gilgard summit, or both. That was what I told myself. There was nothing in the Secrets of the Ancients about the Lady having an immanence separate from her crystal housing, no historical precedent for her taking up residence in a living human body.
The rain lanced against my face; the words came clearly inside my head. There wouldn't be a precedent, would there? Nobody ever broke the glass before.
True,
I retorte
d, but why would the Lady then spend six years stowing away in my head, without so much as a whisper of her presence? Perhaps there was no need before now.
What do you mean, no need? I can think of plenty of times I could have used a bit of power, and where was she then? Anyway, wouldn't I have felt her presence, like a lump in my brain, or a hollow place, or—?
The Harashil,
the answer came back coldly, is neither a lump nor a hollow place. The who?
Silence for a few seconds, then a silvery chuckle, not in my ears but between them, mixed with the keening of the wind. I shut my eyes and found the golden motes already there, with a figure behind them, silver-maned and shimmering, all too familiar, that pulsed and flickered and receded, and then seemed to vanish teasingly into some secret chamber in the back of my brain.
Come back! Come back here and show yourself!
Silence.
Come back!
A sudden gust snapped the shrouds over my head like so many harp-strings. A great flap of sailcloth collapsed on to the deck and twitched there for a few seconds like a living thing, a dying thing, before the wind picked it up and whirled it out of sight. The edge of the storm was a dark curtain pulled across the sea only a few boat-lengths away.
"I'm going mad." I said that out loud, but the reply was inside my head.
No, you're not.
* * *
14
I CLUNG TO the stanchion for perhaps an hour, taking no notice of the rain that soaked me to the skin and the waves that washed over the afterdeck. Towards the end of the hour something happened that was too grievous to watch, but I forced myself to watch anyway, and tried every way I could think of to influence the outcome; and when it was all over, I howled some useless and totally unheeded threats at the murdering stormbitch and went below deck.
Gil Trilogy 2: Scion's Lady Page 10
