The Fall of Lostport

by R. J. Vickers

  Dear Father and Laina,

  I am settling in very well here. I have been given a wing of a splendid seaside palace—far grander than our own home. The best part is that my wing does not have any infernal stairs. I have a wheeled chair that I can maneuver myself, so I do not have to be followed around by tiresome servants all day. My rooms open onto a wide balcony, where I conduct most of my studies.

  How goes the road to Port Emerald? And has the building project commenced? I do hope that you have been able to appoint an heir to rule in my stead, as Whitland seems poised to press its advantage.

  I hope you are well. I think of you daily. I would love to hear word from you.

  Fond wishes,

  Doran

  Laina read the letter through three times, wondering if Doran had any idea of how dire the situation in Lostport had become. At last she stood and made her way to her father’s grand bedroom at the end of the hall, wishing she could read the letter to him. The bedroom was too large for one man alone; whenever Laina ventured inside, she was reminded more fiercely than ever of the loss of the mother she had never known. As a young child, she had resented her mother for vanishing, though as she grew older, her father had revealed the truth—her mother had been heartsick to be trapped so far from her own kin, in a barely civilized settlement at the ends of the earth, and her sadness had nearly cost her own life. Now Laina pitied her mother and wished she had another chance to prove that Lostport could be more than just a desolate outpost.

  Nort was waiting outside the doors, and he nodded when Laina asked if she could see her father.

  “He’s sleeping,” Nort whispered. “Peacefully now, thank the Seducer.”

  Laina nodded and tiptoed past the guard.

  Inside, the room was musty and overheated, though the smell was disguised by a floral aroma. Barrik was there, along with a healer from town, and both were keeping her father’s forehead cool with rags. The cast of his skin looked almost feverish.

  “Is he going to recover?” Laina asked timidly, venturing to the bedside and taking her father’s limp hand.

  “Almost undoubtedly,” the healer said. “He was confused when he first woke, though he has since regained some of his clarity. He appears to have taken ill while out in the forest, however. We must hope that the fever does not interfere with his recovery.”

  Laina swallowed. How could she have been so careless? “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I’m afraid not.” The healer gave a long sigh. “The most he can ask for right now is rest and quiet.”

  Laina nodded, feeling less than useless. Bidding the healer and guards farewell, she slunk off to return to her father’s paperwork.

  Since she had no idea where to begin, she packed the entire contents of the top drawer into a large traveling case and headed downstairs in hopes of visiting Jairus and Swick. On the way she stopped in the kitchen, mostly to see if the household staff decided to blame her or look up to her. Mylo was the only one sitting by the fire when she rounded the corner; he was hunched over a stack of clams and splitting them open.

  “Good to see you, my dear,” he said, his smile guarded. “Or should I say, your majesty?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Laina said. “It’s just a temporary role. Don’t get too used to bowing to me.”

  “Perhaps we should,” Mylo said, getting laboriously to his feet. “Though King Faolan will never admit it, he would cede Lostport to you if he could. Doran barely has the will to live, let alone set the kingdom’s affairs in order.”

  “Right.” Laina folded her arms. “Are you any good with sums?” She might as well ask—he was the likeliest of their household to know these sorts of things.

  “Simple ones,” Mylo said, cupping her cheeks in his hands. “You look weary. How are you coping?”

  Laina shrugged. “I’ve wanted this sort of responsibility for my entire life, and now that I have it, I just want my father to get better again.” She looked quickly away, eyes stinging.

  “I suggest you speak to Master Swick,” Mylo said. “He’s far more knowledgeable than me in those sorts of matters.”

  “That’s where I’m heading now, actually.”

  “Well, don’t forget your lunch.” Mylo handed her a cloth tied around what smelled like a fresh-baked meat pie. It was as if Mylo had already known she would be going out.

  “Thank you.” Laina embraced Mylo briefly, and he blinked at her in surprise. She was so uncertain of everything just now that a small measure of confidence meant everything to her.

  It was sunny and peaceful out, entirely at odds with the turmoil she left behind. The light had a burnt orange cast to it, the glow of late summer—before long the flowers would fade and the rains would come. Laina took the stairs down to the city with more care than usual, afraid she would lose the precious satchel of documents. She should have invited Swick to join her at the manor, rather than risk damaging the most important paperwork in all of Lostport, but her motivation had been partly selfish. It was a relief to leave the house.

  As she approached the town, Laina had a strong feeling that something was not quite right. At first she could not put her finger on it; then she realized that most of the open-fronted stores were closed and locked tight, and the only people milling about were dressed in Whitish garb.

  Her people were beginning to rebel.

  When she reached the Seal’s Roost, she half expected to be denied entry. Thankfully the man guarding the door was the bartender who had become accustomed to her presence, and he unlatched the door without a word. Once inside, Laina turned to him with a frown.

  “What is the meaning of all this? Has the town gone under siege?”

  The barman scratched his beard. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard. The owner of the general store shut his doors last night, saying there wasn’t near enough stock to feed the townspeople, let alone the whole blasted army, and he was fed up with the looting and harassment. Well, the Whitlanders didn’t take that very well. When I went for a walk this morning, the man’s supply ship wasn’t more than a smoking ruin in the harbor, and the general store had its doors busted in.”

  “Nine plagues.” Laina was disgusted. High King Luistan was hardly making an effort to disguise his army as a peaceful labor force. Unless the High King had lost control over his own troops, which was more disconcerting still.

  “Strange days, these are,” the barman muttered. “I expect you’re after the mapmaker?”

  Laina nodded, scanning the room. She had not been certain she would find Swick here, and it certainly looked as though he had gone out.

  “He should be back shortly. Something about checking out a derelict building down the road.”

  “Mind if I wait?” Laina set the satchel of papers beside Swick’s customary table and sank into a chair.

  The barman chuckled. “Do we look busy? I’ll bring you a drink.”

  Since it was still morning, the barman gave Laina a hot chocolate, which she sipped without noticing what she was doing. If only her brother was still around. He had never been one for negotiating—though he was clever, he turned shy in the face of argument—yet he would have been able to reason his way to the root of their troubles. He would have sorted through the paperwork with ease, separating the issues that mattered from the ones intended to distract.

  If the matter had been less pressing, she would have written him a letter begging for his advice. Better still, she would have pleaded with him to return home. He had been in Chelt too long already.

  She was just draining the last syrupy drops of her hot chocolate when Swick and Jairus slipped into the inn.

  “Laina.” Swick smiled generously. “Just the person I most wished to see.”

  Quickly Laina wiped chocolate from her upper lip.

  “What do you make of this mess?” Swick asked. “Events have been moving too quickly. I fear Whitland may press its advantage before long.”

  Laina waited until Jairus and Swick had tak
en seats across from her before she whispered, “You’ve started the gemstones, then?”

  “We have the space for it,” Swick said. “It’s an old forge just past the town. I think it was flooded some time ago; I can’t think why else the owner would have abandoned such a charming place.”

  “And the cave,” Jairus said. “Show her where it is.”

  Swick pulled a crumpled map from his trousers and smoothed it before Laina. It looked like a hasty sketch, though the road seemed accurate enough. “See, just there?” Swick jabbed his finger at a tiny black spot just behind the mountain at the head of the Port Emerald fjord. “It’s an extensive cave, though it drops off a bit too steeply to encourage thorough exploration. There is a small side chamber just past the entrance where we thought the treasure ought to be hidden. It’s hard to find, so it won’t seem like a complete hoax, yet it’s obvious enough that men will not lose their way in the caverns trying to find it.”

  “That would solve a few of our problems, though,” Laina said.

  Jairus gave her a fleeting smile.

  “But we’ve been impolite. Why have you come to visit us, milady?” Swick asked, accepting a foaming mug from the barman. “Has your father’s condition worsened?”

  Laina shook her head quickly. “It’s not that. Well, I suppose it is. With my father unable to attend official business, his adviser has told me it’s my responsibility to step up and fill in for him.

  “Can he not do it himself?” Jairus asked. “Surely he is better versed in statecraft than you.”

  “No offense meant, of course,” Swick said, giving Jairus a kick under the table, “but he’s right.”

  “That’s the problem.” Laina lifted the bag of paperwork onto the table and dropped it in front of Swick. “I don’t know a thing about managing a kingdom, but Harrow doesn’t have the authority to treat directly with King Luistan on sensitive matters.”

  “Ah.” Swick lifted the top of the satchel and narrowed his eyes at the formidable stack of papers. “When you say ‘sensitive matters,’ does that mean your father and the High King have their disagreements on this project?”

  “Yes. Very much so.” Laina noticed that Swick was suddenly very alert. “They’ve been disagreeing all along, it seems. My father has kept the matter quiet, but I don’t think he’s pleased with King Luistan’s interference. He just can’t do much about it. That’s what all of this paperwork is—small advantages the High King is trying to weasel out of my father, while distracting him from the actual problem.”

  “And what do you want us for?” Jairus asked a bit defensively.

  “I need help deciphering these,” Laina said. “I need to learn how to do complex sums, and I need to know which of these sound fair and which are completely unreasonable.”

  “I have a suspicion every one of them is unreasonable,” Swick said.

  Laina slipped the top several papers from the stack. “You’re probably right. But if we can figure these out, we can keep the High King’s army from doing ridiculous things like raiding our warehouses and camping out in my father’s hall.”

  “Maybe.” Swick took the top paper and gave it a cursory glance. “Or maybe they’re completely beyond his control. I would have expected King Luistan to exercise more caution with his forces.”

  For the remainder of the afternoon, Laina sat with Jairus and Swick as they pored over the never-ending stack of contracts and proposals and decrees. Swick’s expression grew grimmer and grimmer as they tackled the paperwork; when Laina finally asked him what was bothering him, he snorted.

  “Those meddling bastards. They even want to buy your water rights! And look here.” He brandished a crumpled paper at Laina. “This one demands that your father surrender the rights to his own house, should it be needed for strategic purposes.”

  Laina grabbed the paper in alarm. “He didn’t sign it, surely?”

  “It looks like a decree, not an agreement,” Jairus said. “His consent was not necessary.”

  No wonder her father had crumpled the page in frustration.

  * * *

  Conard had arrived in the soldiers’ camp at a fortuitous time. With the influx of new builders, he was hardly given a second glance, and he was able to accompany the men he’d met at the gypsy camp as they were given campsites and a tour of the project.

  Now that he got a proper look at it, Conard realized that the city was progressing more quickly than he had realized. Terraces snaked their way along every slope, ousting the trees, which were now confined to decorative clusters. Foundations and frames dotted the mountainsides, and even from far below Conard could see the insect-like building crews swarming about the unfinished structures. Amidst the half-built homes, a few completed ones stood out—elegant stone creations that suited the majestic setting perfectly.

  The project director had noticed the direction of Conard’s gaze. “That’s the future home of one Grayler Barridon. He’s quite possibly the wealthiest man in Whitland; owns most of the banks in the country, along with most of the jewel-merchants. You can see why that’s a strategic place for him.”

  Conard shielded his eyes from the sun and peered more closely at the stone mansion. It was built along several levels of the slope, with supports anchoring it into the terrace below and three delicate towers rising above its pale green roof. The man who lived there would have a stunning view of the fjord, the harbor, and the mountains beyond. A fleeting thought came to him—why did he have to sabotage the building effort? What if he and Laina found a diplomatic way to persuade the builders to return home after completing Port Emerald, leaving Varrival to its own devices, and he was able to use his earnings to buy Laina the house with the best view in the harbor?

  It was nothing but foolishness. If Laina knew what he was thinking, she would immediately suspect him of changing allegiances.

  “You lot can start with hauling stones,” the director said. “We haven’t got horses, so you’re responsible for the brute labor. Once you’ve proved your worth, you’ll be reassigned.” Hands on his hips, he eyed the group of new arrivals. “If any of you louts has a bit of experience behind you, don’t keep quiet. Come and tell me now, before it’s too late.”

  Four men shouldered their way to the front of the group. The director spoke to them briefly before pointing each in a different direction. One of them, a lithe, delicate-looking man with blonde hair down to his shoulders, was sent straight back to Conard’s crew of beginners.

  “What?” Conard muttered, moving aside to make room for him in the group. “You trying to get out of moving stones?”

  The man flushed. “I’ve worked on buildings before. I’m a mathematician, though. Captain Drail wasn’t impressed.”

  “What’s your name?” Conard asked.

  “Ian. Yours?”

  “Kellar. You’re probably better off than me. I’ll be stuck hauling bricks for the rest of my life, knowing my luck. I haven’t a clue how to build things.”

  Ian grinned. “You can haul my bricks, and I’ll teach you how the dimensions work.”

  “Fat chance,” Conard said.

  Conard could see how the other men looked at Ian. They seemed to be smiling at a private joke whenever he passed, and Conard suspected his ill luck with the building promotion had only further tainted his reputation. For the rest of the first day, Conard tried to elude Ian’s company, hoping to avoid being grouped with a weakling. It was his task, after all, to befriend the builders. He wouldn’t win any allies if he kept the company of loners.

  No one could talk much that first day, regardless, because each man was assigned a stack of fifty stones and instructed to carry each one to a specific building site. What looked like a haphazard splay of houses was actually designed on a grid system, with each terrace assigned a number and each set of stairs leading up the terrace given a letter. Conard and each of the other builders was able to pick out their destination, written as a number and a letter, from a map showing the various sites.

 
On his first trip to the building site, Conard heaved two bricks on top of one another and staggered up the hill one ponderous step at a time, trying not to collapse under the weight. It had seemed like a good idea at the bottom of the hill, but halfway to his destination, he dropped to one knee and let both bricks thud to the ground.

  “Bloody plagues!” he gasped, sitting heavily on the closest brick. From his vantage point, he recognized several of the other men in his group, including Ian, each climbing a different flight of stairs. It seemed that he had been given one of the highest destinations, curse them.

  So much for his vanity. Once he had caught his breath, Conard wiped grimy sweat from the back of his neck and hoisted one of the two bricks, leaving the other where it sat. Somehow it felt just as heavy as the two of them combined.

  By the time he reached the building site, his arms had gone numb and his back ached. How was he supposed to carry up forty-nine more of the same?

  One of the men working at this building site, which was little more than a foundation, hailed Conard.

  “Is it just you?” he grunted. “We’re promised four stone-haulers, and they send us a bloody child.”

  “Go stuff yourself,” Conard muttered, too quiet for the man to hear. Louder, he said, “Just me. One of you could come help, if you’re getting impatient.”

  “Bugger off,” the man said.

  Conard dropped the brick and slouched away. He couldn’t stop thinking of the pile of white bricks, towering at the base of the hill…

  He delivered the second brick quickly, since it was already halfway up the hillside, and took much longer with the third. It was past noon, and his stomach was rumbling, but the man at the building site yelled abuse at him for his tardiness. By the time he staggered back down to the mountain of bricks, he realized there was no way he would make a dent in the pile before the sun went down. After that he started walking slower, taking breaks every few terraces and wishing he had thought to bring food.