The Fall of Lostport

by R. J. Vickers

  “I doubt I’ll find a woman that quickly,” Doran said. Now that he had made his decision, he felt stronger than before, refreshed. He refused to bow to the irritating butler’s demands. “Send out the word that all eligible women in Torrein are to report to me by the end of this quarter.”

  “As you wish, Milord.”

  As he waited impatiently for the first of the women to appear, Doran began compiling a list of requirements for his bride. He wrote it neatly on a sheet of parchment, which he left unfurled on his desk to refer to. The unlucky woman would need to be plain, agreeable, and good enough at keeping secrets to conceal the true father of her child. With any luck, she would also have some degree of influence in Whitland, whether through trade or through her relation to a member of the Whitish nobility.

  On the morning of the third day, he found Duffrey and asked whether any progress had been made.

  “Unfortunately, no,” said Duffrey, his mouth twisting with something that could have been pity or simply distaste. “The eligible girls—all two of them—would prefer not to marry someone from a far-off kingdom. They know the story of your parents, how your mother fled to Whitland after life in Lostport became too great a burden. And the rest of the girls—well, you wouldn’t want to meet them anyway. They are far too common.”

  “That isn’t good enough,” Doran said angrily. “You must try harder. Bring me the common girls, if you must. Extend the invitation to the next town to the north. I will find a bride here.”

  “As you wish, Milord,” Duffrey said crisply. Doran had a feeling the butler was mocking him.

  Yet three more days passed without any sign of a prospective bride. Doran suspected that his butler was deliberately keeping the women away—most would jump at the chance to marry a royal heir, no matter the circumstances—or perhaps his butler had never extended the invitation at all.

  This darker train of thought had Doran watching the man’s every move, searching for the slip that would reveal his corruption. It was difficult, though—beneath Doran’s watchful eye, Duffrey was obedient if short with him. But he could do nothing to ensure the man was faithful outside of the manor. He was helpless without his staff to look after him.

  After a quarter had passed with no news, Doran decided it was time for him to take matters into his own hands, shameful or not. He waited for the household to retire before wheeling himself to the grand entryway. He had not left the manor once since his arrival in Torrein.

  The step just beyond the main entrance nearly defeated him. After eyeing it from several angles, trying to decide whether he could climb to the ground and then return to his chair once he had cleared the step, he wheeled backward, approached with a bit of momentum, and dropped down the step with a bone-jarring thump.

  He was free.

  The sea air filled his lungs, carrying the faint whiff of fire smoke from town. Doran turned and started along the cobblestone path, his chair jolting with every movement, gripping the wheels tightly as the incline began to increase gradually.

  Soon it was all he could do to keep from losing control and careening downhill. Both sweaty hands were gripping the wheels so tightly the wood bit into his skin, and he only dared release one at a time, feeling the weight of his body compelling him ever downward. He would never make it back to the manor unaided.

  Suddenly, one wheel dropped into a deep crevice between stones, where the mortar had worn away. At the jarring impact, Doran’s sweaty hand slipped from the wheel, and the whole chair began hurtling downhill.

  The houses were flashing by so fast he couldn’t register them.

  The strangest part was that he felt as though a piece of him watched from above, a part that remained uninjured and could only shake its head at how careless and clumsy his crippled body had become.

  His wheels jolted painfully on the cobblestones, the chair swaying wildly back and forth, and the air whistled past his ears.

  Then the road came to a great arc where it curved out to sea, and the houses at its foot were rushing at him.

  Doran grabbed uselessly for the wheels of his chair, only managing to tear open a strip of his hand with the friction that drove him onward.

  He heard shouts from nearby—someone must have noticed him, though he could see nothing but the blur of motion all around.

  He crashed into the wall at full speed, his knees hitting first and throwing his body back so his chair nearly toppled over.

  Doran gave a roar of pain as the jolt of impact assaulted him.

  * * *

  Laina barely managed to escape her home. A line of disgruntled villagers had assembled on her front lawn, so she stole into the forest and skirted around the house to the hillside, hoping no one would recognize her on the stairs into Lostport.

  After the hostilities of the previous day, the Whitish soldiers felt more entitled than ever, while the shopkeepers were begging for armed protection. Laina had almost been dragged out of bed to address the situation, though she was afraid of making the wrong judgment at such a crucial time. She needed Jairus and Swick.

  Out of breath and sweating by the time she reached Lostport, she nearly collided with a pair of Whitish soldiers. One of them began to apologize, while the other grabbed her wrist with a smirk.

  “Pretty bit of flesh you are,” he said, grasping her chin and forcing her to look at him.

  Laina kicked him in the ankle and tried to twist her arm free, but the man snatched a chunk of her hair and pulled her face closer.

  “Oi!” Footsteps pounded closer—a villager had spotted the commotion and came to help, brandishing a broom like a spear. “That’s the king’s daughter, you idiot! You could be drowned for this.”

  As though stung, the soldier released Laina. He and his companion slunk away, muttering to one another.

  “Thank you.” Laina rubbed at her smarting wrist. “I’m speaking with most of the townsfolk before the morning is over. Would you like to lend your voice to the assembly?”

  “I’d love to,” the man said, propping the broom against a step and leaning on it. “Only, someone has to look after the village. If I went tramping up that hill, I’d come back to find the whole place burned to dust.”

  “Fair point,” Laina said darkly. “Well, your efforts will not go unnoticed. We are all indebted to you.”

  Swick and Jairus were already in the dining room pulling on their boots when Laina arrived at the Seal’s Roost.

  “What are you doing here?” Swick asked. “I thought you were speaking with the villagers today.”

  “I need your help,” Laina said. “I want both of you to join Harrow as my advisers, so the villagers know they can trust my decisions.”

  “They will hardly trust a pair of foreigners,” Jairus muttered. “Especially after last night. You should hope no soldiers drop in at your council.”

  Laina was alarmed. “Is something wrong? Is Conard hurt?” She knew Jairus had gone to show Conard the caves the previous night.

  “I see where your loyalties lie.” Jairus’s voice was bitter. “Conard is not foreign, is he? No, I am the one in danger. I must have given one of their guards a concussion, and if he survives, he will immediately recognize me.”

  “I can go alone, if you think that best,” Swick said.

  “No.” Laina held open the inn door. “If you’re to become a target, Jairus, I want to show that you have the support of Lostport. The Whitish soldiers will not be able to harm you without directly antagonizing me.”

  Jairus snorted. “I doubt they would care.”

  As they began the long climb up the stairs once more, Laina fell into step beside Jairus. “You seem very bitter about something. Have I asked too much of you?”

  He shook his head. “I dislike Conard. That’s all. Your childhood friend has hardly embraced adulthood.” Jairus glanced at Laina, his face hard. “I found him drunk almost senseless, and before long he was making insane threats. I do not trust him. We should find someone new to fill his part.”
r />   “Who?” Laina said. “There is no one I trust more than Conard. You shouldn’t be so harsh on him, Jairus. He was exiled unjustly, and he’s put himself in great peril to help us. I should never have forced the choice on him. Or on any of you.”

  “We all do what we must,” Swick said from behind her. “And right now that includes getting to your father’s hall as quickly as possible.”

  Laina swallowed what she had been about to say and began jogging up the steps, her heart thrumming. Had she been mistaken? Maybe she had judged Conard wrong. She had known him from a child, and perhaps the person he had once been had blinded her to his true intentions. What if he had nearly killed her brother on purpose?

  That was insane. The ships had collided; it could as easily have been Conard who wound up paralyzed and unwilling to face life. Jairus spoke from petty spite, not from true concern.

  As soon as she crested the hill and stumbled, panting, onto the sweet-smelling lawn, Laina wished she had gone straight to the council. The line stretched past the double doors and out onto the lawn, where Nort and Barrik were trying to maintain order.

  “Meet me at the foot of the stairs,” Laina told Jairus and Swick. Then she dashed off to the forest and sprinted around to the back entrance. Inside, she struggled into a clean dress, splashed cold water on her face, and pinned a few loose hairs back into their knot. Though she knew she was flushed and still perspiring, she had no more time to compose herself.

  She straightened. As her father had told Laina and Doran many times before, royalty was one part posture, one part intelligence, and two parts confidence. If she could not muster the last two, at least she could stand tall.

  When she turned the corner and emerged at the top of the staircase, the restless muttering ceased and every eye turned to Laina. Someone had dragged her father’s sturdy emberwood chair—the closest he had to a throne—to the head of the entrance hall, just at the foot of the stairs, and Harrow stood to one side. Jairus and Swick were edging their way along the wall, doing their best not to draw attention.

  “Sorry I was delayed,” Laina said, her heartbeat quickening as she descended the final two steps and took her father’s place in the chair. She had never taken the seat of authority before, not even in practice. It had been her brother leading mock councils and presiding over the less serious disputes, learning from a young age how to project assurance and wisdom before a crowd, and even sitting in the great chair to read. He had been bred for this. Not Laina.

  “We’re sorry to hear that your father’s taken ill,” said the butcher’s wife, who Laina knew from childhood. It was the butcher and his wife who had most frequently been called upon to chase Laina and Conard down when her father called them home for supper.

  “I’m sorry as well,” Laina said. “We all wish he could be here to see things right, but I will do the best I can in his stead. I have three advisers to assist me today—my father’s trusted counsellor, Master Harrow, and my good friends, Master Swick and Messer Jairus, here to bring another perspective to our present troubles.”

  Several townspeople applauded, though most seemed anxious to proceed to the more pressing matters.

  “Who is first? Unless you have a collective issue that you would like to send a spokesperson forward with, you can come speak to me one at a time.”

  A pair of fishermen separated from the crowd first.

  “We’ve gone and lost everything yesterday,” one said.

  “They’ve been heckling us all along,” the other added. “Demanding free fish, then saying we’d have to salt half our catch for their stores, and threatening to torch the place if we didn’t comply.”

  “But we’ve only been reporting half of the fish we’ve caught.” The first fisherman scratched his ear and gave Laina a sly look. “Been keeping ourselves afloat, so to speak, saving just enough to get us by.”

  “Only yesterday—”

  The first man elbowed the second. “I was telling the story, halfwit. My boat, my story.” He turned back to Laina. “Anyhow, soon as we heard the soldiers were harassing shopkeepers, we went and barred the shop door and slept inside that night. We weren’t gonna be robbed or torched. But we wake up in the morning, then, and our bloody ship’s gone! The miserable bastards nicked it!”

  “Now we don’t have a livelihood. No money, no salt fish, no ship. We may as well torch the shop ourselves and take up begging.”

  “Ah,” Laina said. Every response she could come up with was so inadequate it would pass for a joke. “I suspect most of you are here for similar reasons—the Whitish builders have overstepped themselves. To them, it appears that we are helpless against their military strength.” We are helpless. She had no better plan than to keep talking until something occurred to her. “But we have advantages they don’t suspect. We know our country. We understand the land and how it changes with the seasons. I propose that we deflect the Whitish aggressions by using the land—by vanishing into the forest.”

  Now she was onto something.

  “Yes, they can burn our houses, and yes, they can make off with our possessions. But that is only so long as those valuables lie within their reach.”

  They were hanging onto every word. Laina paused, allowing the idea to form more clearly before she proceeded.

  “I bet most of you know some sort of hidden place in the woods—a cave or a gully or a hollow tree. We can work individually or together to hide most of this town’s valuables in several locations throughout the forest. The blacksmith can help us forge waterproof boxes for them. My friend Swick is a cartographer, and he can plot the location of every box on a map. That way the goods will not be lost if something happens to their owner.”

  “What about our boat?” the first fisherman asked.

  “Shut it,” another man shouted from somewhere in the crowd. “Would you rather be compensated for the boat and have it all taken a day later?”

  “Thank you,” Laina said, raising a hand for silence. “That is a good point. I certainly could refund you for the boat, good sir, but that would set an example, and hereafter every person who lost property on account of the Whitish would expect compensation. We simply don’t have enough money for that. However—”

  Again she raised a hand to quell the disgruntled voices that broke out in response to this. She waited until the room was silent.

  “However, we can try to force the Whitish soldiers to pay full price for the goods they demand. The High King has been negotiating the terms of the building contract with my father, but the paperwork has not yet been signed. That means the Whitish builders are not entitled to anything. King Luistan must first prove that anything we give them will return to us in full once Port Emerald is completed. This does not include revenue earned solely by the residents of the new port.”

  Laina had been appalled to discover that particular document the other day—it was infuriating to know that the Whitish had not been authorized to act as they did, yet Lostport had no way of restraining them.

  “We can form a law-enforcement group that takes turns patrolling the streets. I imagine the builders who stole your boat and looted the general store weren’t operating in large groups. They were probably small drunken parties, not authorized by the Whitish captains. If we keep an eye on the streets at night, we can ensure no one destroys our town.”

  “What if the whole lot of them ransack the place?” the second fisherman asked, though he had been nodding along to Laina’s words.

  “Then we consider it a declaration of war.”

  “We’d never survive,” a woman in the back called. “There are ten of the Whitish soldiers for every one of us.”

  Swick stepped forward. “You have allies in the rest of the Kinship Thrones. Dardensfell is not as closely allied with Whitland as many think; if summoned, our people would come to your aid.”

  “As would my people,” Jairus said. “Whitland will march on Varrival before winter falls, and we would rather halt the army before it reaches our land
s.”

  “But how long would that take?” said a young man with a small girl in his arms. “We could be dead long before they arrive.”

  “I know,” Laina said. “I will send word, though. I will do what I can. And in the meantime, will you form a patrol? Think on it. It may not be the safest idea, but it’s the best chance we have. I’ll leave the choice up to you.”

  “About those boxes,” an old woman said, her voice nearly drowned out by the rising babble. Harrow rapped on the side of Laina’s emberwood chair, and after a while most of the talking subsided.

  “Yes?” Laina asked.

  “Could we start a set of food-boxes as well?” the old woman said. “In case all of our fishing boats are taken over and our crops fail. That way we can hold out longer than the Whitish if things go badly.”

  “Brilliant idea,” Laina said. “Would you like to help our cook, Mylo, and the general store owner compile a list of foods we ought to include? Perhaps we should create a medicine box as well.”

  Again the rising talk threatened to drown out Laina’s voice.

  “Excuse me!” she called. “If anyone else has something to bring up that I haven’t yet addressed, please come forward. The rest of you, would you please continue your conversation in the garden? Mylo will bring refreshments.”

  That last promise mobilized the crowd immediately. The ensuing din echoed down the entrance hall so loudly Laina couldn’t hear herself think.

  “Very well done,” Harrow said, bending down to speak directly in Laina’s ear. “They were rapt.”

  “It doesn’t solve much, though, does it?” Laina sank back in the chair. “The real problem is, we don’t rule this place any longer. High King Luistan does, and if he says his soldiers can burn Lostport to the ground, they’ll do it gladly.

  “Yes, and it is absolutely essential your people do not find this out,” Harrow said. “They look to you as the only source of justice in a world that has gone mad, and you cannot forsake them.”

  “Will you call on Dardensfell and Varrival for aid?” Jairus asked eagerly.