The Fall of Lostport

by R. J. Vickers

  “I must speak to you,” Katrien said gently, removing her sealskin cloak. The ends of her hair were soaked, and her nose was red from the cold. Tenori took the cloak from Katrien and retreated to the storeroom that now belonged to the Varrilan boy, Kurjan, leaving a trail of water on the filthy tiles.

  “Come,” Faolan said, taking Katrien’s arm and leading her to the dining hall. “You must warm up first.” He called for Mylo, who appeared at once. “Tell our useless staff to do something about the mess in that hall,” he said. “And bring my wife a pot of cinnamon tea.”

  “At once, sire.” Mylo bowed and hurried off.

  Faolan watched the man go, frowning. He was not accustomed to such formality from his staff—then again, he had been treating them ill of late. His own fears for Laina and the fate of Lostport had translated to a harsh and unforgiving manner. He needed to tread carefully.

  For a while, Faolan and Katrien sat in silence. Faolan held Katrien’s hands, hoping to reassure her even if he could not find the words to do so, and around them the household staff busied themselves with cleaning the manor. He could hear the rain dripping down the chimney and onto the kitchen hearth while the fire continued to spit and crackle to itself.

  When he had finally gathered enough courage to apologize for his manner, Faolan drew Katrien’s hands to him and kissed her fingers. She glanced at him with a flickering smile before looking away.

  “Are you angry with me?” he asked.

  Katrien’s eyes widened. “No! Certainly not. I am merely wrapped in my own fears. As are you, I can see.”

  “Do you blame me for chasing Laina away?”

  Katrien pursed her lips in thought. “She would have gone regardless, I think. But you should not have condemned the boy so rashly. I never knew Conard, so I cannot judge for myself, but Laina is convinced he is innocent of any crime. I am inclined to trust her intuition.”

  Faolan sighed. “The fact that Conard did not leave Lostport is what convinced me of his guilt. Without completing his mission, he could not return to Whitland. If he had been a free agent, he would have taken the chance I gave him and escaped to a different kingdom.”

  “Unless it was something stronger than fear that chained him here,” Katrien said.

  Faolan did not know what she spoke of. When he shook his head, she leaned forward.

  “Love. He loved Laina, I am certain of it.”

  “Well, it no longer matters,” Faolan said darkly. He released Katrien’s hands, feeling himself unworthy to claim her. “Conard is dead, and so is Laina, for all I know. I would happily give Conard all the wealth in the world if it meant my daughter was returned safe to me.”

  “As would I.”

  “Now,” Faolan said, casting about for a less grim subject. “As you know, our daughter, in all the foolishness of youth, has promised aid to the Whitish builders should they encounter circumstances exactly like these. It is an intelligent move, strategically, but we simply do not have the means to provide for several thousand builders. As my wife, what would you recommend we do?”

  “Give them what supplies you can,” Katrien said urgently. “They may be a nuisance and a threat to Lostport, but it is not the builders who have declared war on Varrival or attempted to overtake Lostport once more. They are men, at the end of the day. Some of them are vile, to be sure, but for the most part they are honest folk who simply need a way to feed themselves.”

  Faolan knew this was true, yet he had trouble convincing himself that the brutes who had ransacked Lostport and made off with whatever they wanted were deserving of sympathy. “And in return? Is there any benefit for us, or will we simply be ensuring the Whitish soldiers are well-fed before they slaughter us all in our beds?”

  “I cannot predict the future,” Katrien said. “But if they have seen kindness from you, the Whitlanders will be more likely to negotiate with Lostport after the floods have cleared. Otherwise they might be driven to attack in retaliation for their discomfort.”

  Faolan could no longer deny the sense of her argument. “You win, my dear, sensible wife. I may as well step aside and leave the throne to you.”

  “Oh!” Katrien said. “I didn’t mean to question your judgment.”

  Again Faolan reached for her hands. “I did not intend to mock you. Your decision is sound, and for that I applaud you. You have changed beyond recognition from the girl I once knew.”

  Faolan summoned Harrow from his office—his friend had been sitting with Faolan all day, digging through every document that pertained to disasters or unforeseeable circumstances on the building site—and bade Harrow visit town to arrange a small ship sent to Port Emerald. Though he did not tell Katrien what supplies he would send, he gave Harrow explicit instructions.

  “The ship must be small enough that it does not encourage evacuation. And do not send it until the seas have calmed. No one will question safety measures such as these.”

  “No, of course not,” Harrow said, hiding a yawn behind his hand. “And the supplies?”

  “Send bulk foods, anything the townsfolk can bear to part with. And sealskin blankets. It won’t do any good to feed the men if they freeze to death straight afterward.”

  “Right. Wish me luck, Faolan. I’m likely to slip down those stairs and break my neck, you know. I’m putting myself in mortal danger for you.”

  Faolan grunted. If Laina had not been missing still, he might have found that amusing.

  * * *

  Laina woke with a start the next morning to find herself surrounded by three men in muddy Whitish uniforms. She scrambled to sit up, forgetting momentarily that her ankle was still sprained, and yelped in pain. A dull grey light streamed in from the cave mouth, and the rhythmic cacophony of rain on the trees beyond the cavern had become, if anything, even louder than the previous day.

  “You’re the princess Laina, aren’t you?” one of the Whitish men asked, stepping back to get a better look at her. “I hardly recognized you, except for the fact that it seems you’re the only person foolish enough to travel these roads in the dark and the rain.”

  Laina brushed back the still-damp strands of hair that had fallen loose from her braid. “Who are you?”

  “We’re friends of Kellar,” said a blonde, almost feminine man. “Conard, rather. The man who was just arrested and taken to Lostport. Do you know his fate?”

  Laina bit back a sob. “He’s drowned. He was taken to the Convict’s Caves and chained there until the high tide filled them with water.”

  “What are you doing here, then?” the first builder asked. He was short and serious.

  “I was trying to rescue him,” Laina choked. She could say nothing more.

  “Let’s get a fire going,” the blond builder said. “You look half-frozen. My name is Ian, and this is Quentin and Emerett. Conard told us about a cave filled with gemstones, and we were looking for it when the bridge was washed out. I’m guessing this is it.”

  Laina nodded. “Has anyone else heard about it?”

  “About fifty other builders passed by us in the night while we were searching. I’m guessing they’re about to ask the gypsies for directions.”

  Laina smiled grimly. She hoped that it would be enough—that by dividing up the builders into disorganized contingents, they would not have enough coordinated force to attack Lostport.

  As the three men built a fire from a bundle of sticks one of them drew from his rucksack, Laina tried to edge closer without jostling her ankle too painfully. Until she had determined whether she ought to trust these men, she did not want them knowing how weak she was.

  Before long, flames were catching on the dry kindling, and Laina carefully sat with her legs to one side so she did not put any pressure on her ankle. Her stomach was beginning to growl, but she hardly cared.

  “Ah, that’s better,” Ian said, wringing water out of his long hair. “You should tell us how you ended up here.”

  At first Laina wanted to refuse. “How do I know I can trust you?�
� she asked carefully.

  “You don’t,” said the man Ian had introduced as Quentin. “But if we had been planning to violate you, we would have done so already. And we’ve come here for the money, not out of any sense of loyalty toward Whitland.”

  Quentin had a gleam of humor in his eye; Laina could see why Conard would get along with someone like him.

  “Fine,” she said at last. “I’ll trust you. As soon as I heard of Conard’s sentence, I rode out to save him. But the guards who had captured him threw me off my horse and left me lying on the road. I’ve injured my ankle, so I can’t walk back.”

  “So you’re bloody lucky we’re here,” Quentin said with a grin. “What were you planning to do if no one found you?”

  “I was waiting for the rain to let up,” Laina said. “Then I was planning to use a pair of sticks as crutches and make my way to the gypsy camp. It doesn’t matter what happens now. Conard is long since gone.”

  Ian raised his hand as if to rub Laina’s shoulder in reassurance, though he thought better of it. It was probably easy to forget she was the heir to Lostport, bedraggled as she was.

  “Did you know Conard was from Lostport all along?” Laina asked, stretching her hands over the fire.

  “I didn’t,” Emerett said.

  “I suspected as much,” Ian said. “We never mentioned it to him, though. I thought he would feel threatened if someone knew.”

  “Captain Drail must’ve guessed,” Quentin said. “They asked Conard to help with the plumbing design in Port Emerald. He doesn’t have the slightest knowledge of plumbing, so they must’ve suspected he knew something about the land here.”

  “They probably recognized that band on his wrist,” Ian said. “I didn’t know it was an exile’s band until Conard was arrested, but Captain Drail might have known.”

  “When he was whipped?” Laina guessed.

  Ian nodded grimly.

  Once the fire was going steadily, Emerett produced two dead wood pigeons from his bag and began roasting them over the flames. The delicious smell quickly filled the cave, and Laina’s stomach rumbled louder than ever.

  After they shared the meat between them, Quentin paced to the front of the cave and stood looking out with his arms folded across his chest. The clouds had lifted somewhat, though the rain had not eased.

  “Don’t like the looks of that,” Emerett said, stumping over to join Quentin. “Blasted rain might never end.”

  “We’ve had worse flooding,” Laina said. “When I left Lostport, the river hadn’t overflowed its banks yet. We had storms one year that flooded the entire town. A couple houses washed right away, and everyone’s floors were left caked in mud after the waters receded.”

  “It amazes me that anyone chooses to live here,” Ian said, prodding at the dying fire. “Truly settle down and live here, I mean. The miners I can understand—there’s more wealth in a couple gemstones than most of us have seen in our entire lives. But who would wish to start a family in such an unforgiving place?”

  “I love it,” Laina said. “Call me naïve—it’s true, I’ve never left Lostport—but it’s the wildness and unpredictability of this place that I like best. It’s as though the land itself wishes to keep people away. And it’s true that there aren’t many families here. Something like three-quarters of the population is comprised of men. Your building crew certainly doesn’t help matters.”

  “Why was Conard pretending to be Whitish?” Ian asked. “At first I thought it was just a way for him to remain in Lostport, but he could have chosen a much less obvious place to hide.”

  “It’s because of those gemstones,” Laina said, nodding in the direction of the hidden chamber. “They’re all fake, every one of them. My friends and I put them there.”

  The men traded dismayed looks.

  “There are so many Whitish soldiers in Lostport right now that we began to fear King Luistan was hoping to reclaim Lostport on his way to Varrival. Now I’m almost certain that’s true. We thought if we could tempt enough men to take the riches and return home, they would leave Lostport and Varrival in peace and undermine King Luistan’s scheme.”

  “That’s almost brilliant,” Emerett said, his voice gravelly. “Except you underestimate men’s greed. Someone would bribe a gypsy to rig up their ship and carry off the whole lot, I guarantee it. You’d have one very wealthy man and a whole lot of others still ready to swarm Lostport.”

  “So we were right?” Laina said quickly. “King Luistan does plan to take over Lostport?”

  Emerett shrugged. “We signed up for this thing without much in the way of explanation. I haven’t the least idea what schemes the High King likes to dream up. But it sounds likely enough. I don’t know why he sent so many soldiers if he wasn’t planning something to do with Lostport.”

  Laina turned a pebble over in her hand, thinking. Despite her resolution to leave Lostport and its troubles behind, she could not shake her hatred of King Luistan and his underhanded dealings. If the gemstone trick had no hope of working, she had few options remaining. Lostport could never best Whitland in a contest of strength, and they did not have the wealth to buy Captain Drail’s loyalty.

  “And what about you three?” she asked. “Are you staying for the long war or heading back home once the project is done?’

  Quentin scuffed his toe in the dirt. “I’m leaving as soon as Port Emerald is finished. I don’t want anything to do with a war, especially not one in Varrival. The desert claims plenty of lives without any help from the Varrilan army.”

  “Same,” Ian said. “I thought I could fight and win honor, but it’s—” He broke off, standing up straighter. “What was that?”

  It took Laina a moment before she heard the slow rumble, building in the distance like a ceaseless roll of thunder.

  “It sounds like a glacier calving,” she said. “Are there any glaciers near Port Emerald?”

  “No,” Ian said.

  Ian and Quentin each put an arm around Laina’s shoulders and helped her to her feet, and she hobbled as quickly as she could back along the streambed and toward the forest road. Emerett ran ahead, splashing muddy water with each footfall, his coat abandoned by the fire. The roar grew louder and louder until it sounded as though the sky might rip in two and swallow them whole.

  When they stumbled onto the forest road and raced the last stretch to the pass, they were greeted with chaos.

  The thunderous roar came from Port Emerald.

  Before their eyes, the stone building at the top of the city was buckling. At last it caved—mud and rain exploded from the wreckage.

  Then the entire slope began sliding away. Trees were uprooted and crushed beneath a volley of mud and stones. When the mudslide reached the city, entire buildings caved beneath the weight of the mountain and were swept away. White stone bricks tumbled from their edifices and rolled down the hillside like children’s toys, and carefully staked-out foundations were engulfed in sludge and rubble.

  The mud tore its way down the mountain, ripping apart everything it touched, destabilizing the entire hillside so even the buildings that escaped its wrath began to sag. Two exquisite stone structures collapsed in a cloud of dust, raining white blocks onto the slopes below.

  At last the mudslide reached the base of the mountain in an eruption of mud and water and wreckage from Port Emerald. Only then did Laina notice the tents at the foot of the mountain, many of them crushed beneath the weight of half the mountainside. She choked back a gasp.

  Then, as quickly as it had begun, the mudslide ended. The rocks and dirt and water settled, leaving behind a silence so laden it hurt. Port Emerald was demolished, its white structures erased from the landscape as though they had never been. Nothing was left behind but a shifting expanse of mud.

  That was it, Laina thought, dazed. Port Emerald was gone. Whitland would reap no wealth from this project, this fool’s mission that had seemed liable to succeed against all odds. King Luistan would not have the funds to send his soldier
s to Varrival. Jairus had won.

  It was that simple.

  And yet, nothing was simple any longer. The soldiers were still trapped in Lostport, and no matter how many had died in the mudslide, they would still outnumber the locals. Rage might spur them to act without orders from King Luistan, to destroy Lostport and all its people. They could take control of the kingdom for themselves and amass the wealth of the rivers until they were practically kings themselves. King Luistan had no true power over them here, two spans’ travel from Whitland and temporarily isolated by the floods.

  “You’re a lucky bastard,” Quentin said shakily to Emerett, breaking the terrible stillness at last.

  He shook his head. “I almost stayed behind,” he told Laina. “Didn’t want too many of us missing at once. Nine plagues, I think my tent was one of the first to be crushed.”

  “Now what?” Ian stepped onto a rock, unable to tear his eyes from the wreckage of Port Emerald.

  “I don’t know,” Laina said. “I really don’t know.”

  “I’m definitely not going back down there now,” Emerett said. “Should we stay here?”

  Laina shook her head. “Do what you like. I have to go back to Lostport.”

  “We’re coming with you,” Quentin said.

  Chapter 26

  F or the second time in his life, Conard woke from a disoriented sleep to find himself aboard a ship. A lump on his head was throbbing fiercely. The first thing he noticed was the rain—though he was wrapped in a waterproof blanket, the ceaseless deluge had soaked into his boots and puddled around him. Rain pounded against his face; his cheeks were numb and his jaw ached from the cold.

  As soon as he came to himself, he began to shiver.

  “Drink this.” Conard recognized the voice as belonging to Jairus, who pressed a thermos of something hot into his hands.

  With trembling hands, he opened the thermos and gulped down what tasted like weak hot cocoa spiked with whiskey. His hands were no longer shackled.