She thought it was Alyster returning, but instead the two men who came aboard wore Dagran clothes. Vinsen went to meet them—obviously he’d been left in charge in Alyster’s absence—and she swallowed the tasteless mouthful of bread as she went closer. She wasn’t going to be left out of this.
Before she could cross half the distance to them, she recognized the taller of the two men.
His back was to her but she didn’t need to see his face. The brown suede jacket stretched across the span of his shoulders and the neatly brushed dark hair were only too familiar. Vinsen had been studying a sheet of paper, but he handed it back to the Dagran and said something she didn’t hear. The man nodded, turned around and saw her.
“Who are they, Vinsen?” she said.
The wary tone wasn’t lost on him, and although his voice didn’t change, his eyes narrowed with equal suspicion. “According to their identification papers, this is Senior Health Inspector Jason Remerley and his aide.”
Had he known she would see him again when he had given her his real name before? The surprise had gone from his face, leaving it like the lid of a locked box, but that made her more determined to find out the truth.
“May I speak to you alone?” she said to him.
Both Vinsen and the aide—if not the entire crew—were looking intently at them both, but Jason just inclined his head in a slight bow. “Certainly.” He turned to his aide. “David, you have the checklist. Start with the hold and I’ll join you.”
Lera turned on her heel and led the way to the nearest deserted spot. Not one of the cabins, because she wasn’t going to be alone with the man again, but the starboard gunwale. It wasn’t actually deserted, but one look from her sent anyone nearby moving to a safe distance, out of earshot. She turned, resting her fingers along the rail so her hand wouldn’t go to the hilt of her saber out of reflex, and tilted her head up so she could look him squarely in the eyes.
“Does this have anything to do with what happened yesterday?” she said.
If she had hoped to throw him with bluntness, it didn’t work. His brows went up a little and that was all.
“You don’t really believe I have the authority to close down an entire port, do you?” he said.
“I’m asking because there’s something very strange about all this.” If there had been any means of sending word to Denalay quickly, Lera would have grabbed it, but the gold she’d earned by winning the race was more or less useless in this situation.
“Not allowing anyone to leave a harbor even after they’re cleared of disease—is that how it’s done in Dagre?” She kept her voice calm, but phrased her questions carefully, trying to strike where he was most vulnerable. “Apparently we have to wait until every ship has been inspected and we can’t go ashore. How much time will this take? Our crews will be hungry before long.”
She could tell he was uncomfortable by the way his gaze dropped, but when it rose again to meet hers, his face looked more closed than before. “I’m sorry, Lera, but we have orders to perform—”
“Captain Vanze.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t give you permission to use my name. When you’re aboard a Denalait ship, you speak to the officers with the respect that is their due.”
His mouth tightened, but he spoke evenly. “I apologize, Captain.”
“What were you saying?” Lera asked as sweetly as she could.
The muscles along his jaw looked like ropes. “We have orders to perform a Priority One inspection of this ship and its crew. That means the most thorough search for any signs of disease.”
“Oh, do we have to strip for you? That’s becoming a habit.”
“I don’t remember inviting you into that brothel.”
“And I don’t remember asking to have a health inspector’s fingers up my—”
“All right, stop.” He looked sideways as if counting cobblestones on the wharf.
“But it might even happen a second time. How wonderful.”
When his gaze flicked back to her, his eyes snapped like the air just below a thunderhead, but his words were cold and controlled. “Much as I enjoy trading pleasantries with you, this is taking me away from my actual duties.”
“And you’re avoiding the point.” Lera folded her arms. “What is really happening here?”
“As a representative of the Dagran government on official duty—”
“You wouldn’t tell me if you knew.”
“Precisely.” He bowed. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain Vanze.”
After that there seemed nothing more she could do, so Lera sent Reimond down to see what the Dagrans were doing. He reported that they had opened the few crates of supplies in the hold and were looking in the ballast tanks.
“Let’s hope they fall in and drown,” she said grimly.
He grinned. “They’re lowering little glass tubes into the tanks.”
“What in the world for?” She’d never understand Dagrans, not if she lived to be a hundred.
“I don’t know. Then they bring the tubes up, write something on them and put them away.”
Lera shook her head and went back to finish what remained of her belated breakfast. Halfway through, Vinsen shouted for her and that brought her topside in a hurry. Vinsen hardly ever raised his voice.
He was on the deck with Kovir, and any relief Lera might have felt at knowing their scout was safe vanished when she joined them. Kovir seemed the same as usual, dressed in the long-sleeved watersuit all Seawatch operatives wore in the field. The sharkskin of the suit gleamed wet and a glass mask was slung around his neck, but his stance was far too rigid and his eyes wide. It was obvious that despite all his Seawatch training, he was only seventeen.
“In the captain’s cabin,” she said, and led the way belowdecks. Whether Alyster minded or not, it was the largest room still available, and the lack of furniture made it that much more spacious. Vinsen shut the door and Kovir didn’t waste time.
“A Dagran asked to speak with me,” he said, “and told me the Council of Dagre needed my assistance in a certain matter. If I cooperate, the quarantine will be lifted.”
Vinsen’s brows came together. “So this is all a pretense?”
They’re nothing but a hive of liars. Lera forced herself to speak calmly. “What do they want you to do?”
Kovir sat on the floor as if he couldn’t remain standing for much longer, resting one elbow on his drawn-up knee. “Travel with a ship of theirs to find someone out beyond the Sea of Weeds.”
The maps were kept in a corner of the room. Vinsen selected one, crouched and unrolled it across the floor. “Here it is.” He tapped the shaded area south of them. A few little islands were scattered below that part of the sea. “It’s not that far—a steamship should make the journey in three days, maybe four.”
“But we’re not going to give in to them,” Lera said. “Not after this farce.”
“Well…”
She stared at him.
Vinsen shrugged tiredly. “I want to leave this place, and we’re outnumbered. But it’s up to Kovir to decide.”
That was true. Lera knelt beside Kovir so his attention was drawn to her. She didn’t normally touch people, and Seawatch operatives weren’t the type who needed a pat on the shoulder, especially if they were wearing sharkskin, so instead she spoke as gently as she could.
“Take as much time as you need to think about it,” she said.
“I don’t think I can, Captain.”
“What do you mean?”
“The man who spoke to me said time was running out.”
Lera forgot all gentleness. “Who in all hell was this lying bastard?”
“He said he spoke on behalf of the Council, and that’s all he told me.”
No way to prove that the man giving Kovir terms—or call them what t
hey really were, an ultimatum—was actually from the Dagran Council, but then again, they weren’t fools. They needed a way to plausibly deny their involvement in such a sordid mess. She met Vinsen’s eyes and knew he’d had the same thought.
“We could wait for Alyster to return and request a meeting with the Council to discuss this,” he said finally.
“If they meet with foreigners, if they’re willing to negotiate terms at all and if there’s time.” She felt more frustrated than ever. “Why would they need a scout? They have a fleet too. They shouldn’t need us to settle their internal disputes.”
“Apparently they do. One of us, anyway.”
Kovir turned his head to look at her. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and he smelled of rotting fish guts. She guessed he’d been confronted as he’d returned from hunting or training with his shark, probably at the mouth of the harbor before he could reach Checkmate.
“It’s not the first time they’ve asked me,” he said.
“What?” Each time she thought she’d heard the ultimate in low, devious behavior from the Dagrans, they proved her wrong.
“It was a different Dagran the first time, but he spoke in the name of the Council too.” The tone of his voice never changed, and she realized he was indifferent to such requests whether they came from the Council on high or the entire population of Dagre down on their knees to plead with him. “Same request, only without any implied consequences, and he said they would pay well.”
“What did you say?” Vinsen asked.
Kovir looked mildly surprised. “I said no. What else could I say? I take my orders from Seawatch, and I want to go back home, not dance to a foreigner’s tune.”
Lera let her breath out slowly. “They want you.”
“Badly enough to close down a port and pay for your services.” Vinsen rolled up the map and tossed it back into the corner. “Not badly enough to tell us why.”
She got to her feet. “They will.”
Jason had already decided his aide would conduct the inspection of the crew, because matters between him and the Denalaits were strained enough already. The ship seemed fine to him—it wasn’t old enough to have developed mold or woodworms—so if the crew was healthy too, any suspicions of disease must have originated from another ship in the harbor.
That bothered him, because he hadn’t been told anything—not what signs and symptoms to look for, nor what the sickness could be, which naturally made the search that much more meticulous and long-drawn-out. He wanted nothing more than to leave, but he kept working as carefully as he always did during an inspection of the highest priority. Once the hold was finished, he went up the steps to the next level, where the crew’s cramped sleeping quarters were located.
Lera barred his way. “I need to speak with you.”
The low sweet voice was just as he remembered it, in stark contrast to the sharp words—but even those sounded familiar. He steeled himself and nodded. He could take whatever she cared to dish out.
She tilted her head towards the nearest passageway, and he followed her halfway down it, where she stopped and turned to face him. A window at the end of the long corridor didn’t let in much light, turning her hair to a subdued smolder.
“Our scout was approached twice by men who claimed to speak on behalf of the Council of Dagre,” she said without preamble. “These men wanted our scout to accompany a Dagran ship on a mission. When our scout declined, because he wanted to return home with us, he was told the quarantine would be lifted if his cooperation was secured.”
Hell. Jason had known something was happening below the surface, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so…well, drastic. What do I say now?
Lera’s tone hardened. “Our lands have been at peace for some time, so we did not expect Dagre to curtail our freedom under false pretenses. Much less try to force a seventeen-year-old to serve a foreign government. If you don’t resolve this matter before sundown, we will. And we’ll take our chances with the Council of Eyes and Voices for any consequences that follow, because we’d rather be put on trial by our own people than be manipulated by Dagrans.”
Bloody hell. Jason didn’t know a great deal about ships, but Checkmate didn’t strike him as capable of taking on three warships.
Lera did, though. Her voice was as steady as the foundation of a fortress and considerably harder, so he was aware Sandcliff Harbor was on the verge of something from which there would be no going back. She meant every word of what she said, and people would die if he didn’t take action.
But he was still a representative of the Dagran government, and would not embarrass his homeland before a foreigner.
“Thank you for informing me of this,” he said. “Was there anything else?”
For a moment there was no sound or movement in the corridor except for someone’s breathing and the silent dance of dust motes in the light from the window. Then she pushed past him and strode away, footfalls ending in the slam of a door.
Jason released a sigh and went to find his aide. After a few quiet instructions, he went topside and walked down the gangplank towards the docks. The guards glanced at him and one moved to stop him, but after he’d given the password he was allowed through the cordon.
He paused there, looking around at all the usual business and bustle on the docks—inns and couriers and financiers, the pall of smoke hanging over the east side of the cove where carpentries and forges clustered. Except a lot of those doors were shut. That was understandable when the harbor was closed, but people were retreating down Port Street, the main thoroughfare which led away from the harbor.
Jason strolled into Port Street and asked two or three of those people where they normally worked, studying his official papers as if to make sure their names were on a list as he did so. They were employed in the harbor, he found out, but they had been told to stay away—well away—until they had authorization to return.
So the harbor was being evacuated. If there really was some contagion, scattering those people to the four winds was an excellent way to disseminate disease through the land. Jason shoved his documents back into his pocket and went to the telegraph office.
Thankfully that was still open, though he had thought it would be—quick communication was too important to be abandoned, especially in a state of emergency. He had a little money and one Denalait coin which wouldn’t have bought anything, but official communiqués of up to fifteen words could be charged to the Department’s account.
Please inform actual purpose quarantine stop Denalaits restless but cleared stop release question mark Remerley, he dictated. Then he sat on a stone bench outside the office to wait for a reply.
It was noon by then, but that wasn’t why he was sweating. He took off his jacket and folded it on the bench beside him. From where he sat, he had a good view of the Denalait ship. The problem with checkmate is that someone will lose the game shortly. If there was any chance of both sides walking away, going home, he had to take it.
The tiny courtyard before the telegraph office was carved and designed as a sundial, and a thin wedge of shadow crept across it as he watched. Within the hour, though, an operator came out to hand him a scrap of paper with a brief reply.
Checkmate remains until further orders from Defense Ministry stop
Jason crumpled it and tossed it to the stones, then reconsidered and returned it to the telegraph office to be disposed of. Lera’s claims, while they hadn’t yet been confirmed, did seem to be somewhat substantiated. The question was what he could do about it.
He’d been to a banquet or two, but no one had ever placed him far from the foot of the table, for obvious reasons. Commonborn, he was neither related to nor acquainted with anyone in office high enough to petition under those circumstances. He had to deal with it himself, and there was no point in appealing to the Department of Public Health, not when the Ministry of Defense was inv
olved. But what in the world could he say to the Ministry?
If the Denalaits requested a meeting, the Ministry might or might not consent to speak with them. For all he knew, the Ministry only wanted a yes or no reply to the terms posed earlier. He had to give them an incentive to meet with the Denalaits, and to do so soon, before the powder keg that was Captain Vanze blew the harbor sky-high.
If he told the Ministry there was likely to be blood in the water come nightfall, Checkmate would be surrounded by the harbor guard and the crew disarmed—or, more likely, killed in the resulting battle. No. If he said he would spread the news of what he had discovered, he’d be in gaol before the hour was out. No, he didn’t like the sound of that either.
But there was one thing which might work. He considered it, decided it was worth a try and went inside again, only to find that he couldn’t condense his message to fifteen words and the telegraph office didn’t work on credit. That emptied his pockets except for a few pennies and the coin Lera had given him, but he paid for his message and had it sent to the Ministry.
Denalait vessel Checkmate positive repeat positive for plague typhoid consumption stop recommend immediate removal from harbor and armed escort to Denalay stop notification of harbor authorities to proceed unless crew needed to discuss mitigating circumstances stop Remerley.
The operator’s brows went up when she read that, but she had been too well trained to react otherwise. Jason told her he would return shortly for a reply and went to the only tavern still open. He’d missed lunch, but his stomach was knotted too tightly to eat and he couldn’t afford a meal anyway, so he drank beer, looked at the ship in the harbor for what felt like the hundredth time and went back to the telegraph office. There was a reply terse even for a telegraph, recalling him to the central office in Crusaid, which was a day away by carriage.
Well, that was to be expected. By then it was late afternoon and he was hungry, but he stayed where he was, watching the harbor—partly because he wasn’t looking forward to what would happen in Crusaid and partly because he wanted to see if his ploy had worked.
The Highest Tide Page 4
