That was more abrupt than Lera had expected, and as she tried to think what to say, the first officer replied. “No matter how fast we strike, sir, he’ll have time to set off the explosives.”
“Oh yes,” Garser said, “but I can’t see any way to remove either his ability to cause a tidal wave or his incentive to do so. Any suggestions in that regard?” His gaze went around the table. “Very well, since that’s an inevitability, all we can do is make sure the man responsible for the death toll pays the price for it.”
Lera got to her feet, deliberately scraping the chair’s legs across the floor to make everyone look at her. She didn’t want thousands of people in Dagre to be killed, but they were nameless strangers compared to a Seawatch operative who was much more of her responsibility.
“Kovir might be a prisoner,” she said, “and if so, I want him back.”
Garser didn’t look pleased at her bringing that up; perhaps he’d been hoping the talk would go on to battle plans. He rested his elbows on the table, propping his chin on his knotted-together hands as he studied her.
“How do you propose we do that?” he said. “I have no doubt Alth will enjoy having one more advantage to hold over our heads, so Kovir might well be a prisoner, but why should Alth release him?”
“We’ll trade that woman for him. I’ll row a boat over to Princeps and if they give me proof they have Kovir alive, we can—”
“No, we can’t. That woman is the only shield we have, and I’m under orders not to release her unless we have no choice but to do so.” His eyes glittered like crushed ice. “I’m sorry for Kovir, but he’s only one person. We do what’s best for the majority, even if individuals pay a price for it.”
Lera felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room, leaving her with her mouth half-open as she struggled to react. That was what she had said, and the bastard used it against her.
“So our best option is a preemptive strike,” Garser went on, addressing his officers as if she hadn’t still been on her feet. “We need to—”
“Captain.” Lera was furious, but someone else’s life hanging in the balance focused the anger, helped her find the one argument which would work under those circumstances. The other officers looked uncomfortable, but she ignored them.
“If Seawatch finds out you coerced a seventeen-year-old operative of theirs into a dangerous mission where he was captured, tortured and murdered, no one in Dagran waters will be safe,” she said. “Don’t imagine the Treaty will protect you either. You won’t see what happens below the surface, where there are anchor lines and hulls. Let him die, and Seawatch will repay you a thousandfold.”
A direct challenge was bad enough without her remaining there, so she made her way to the door in the resulting silence. The steward only seemed to shake off his stunned immobility at the last moment to open the door. “Let me know when you decide what to do,” she said, and walked out.
Back in her cabin, she took off her coat, because she was sweating beneath her shirt. As what felt like hours went by, gooseprickles covered her skin. What if she’d miscalculated? Wrapping her arms around herself, she sat on the iron-banded chest, trying not to look at Kovir’s empty hammock. She didn’t know how the word “tortured” had slipped out when she’d issued her warning to Garser, but she wished she’d never thought of it.
The door opened. Light from a lantern in the passage glanced off Garser’s shoulders, gleaming on his hair and the polished buttons of his uniform.
“We’ll wait until morning,” he said. “Then you’re free to row across to Princeps—if you want to take the risk with a shark in the water. Once you return, we’ll decide what to do next.”
Lera could only hope he was telling the truth about the last part, and wouldn’t launch the attack the moment she set off. She forced herself to thank him. He closed the door without another word, and his heavy footsteps headed towards his cabin.
She wanted to sleep, because if there was going to be battle the next day she needed all the rest she could get. Her shoulders were knotted and her legs felt like anchors as she trudged over to her hammock, but a quiet knock made her turn. When she opened the door, Jason was outside, a steaming mug in each hand.
“Thought you could use something to drink,” he said.
Lera took the mug gratefully, wrapping her cold fingers around it. “Thank you.”
“I heard about Kovir.” He glanced in the direction of Garser’s door as if to make sure it was closed. “If you need someone to go with you to Princeps, I’ll come.”
Not for the first time, Lera thought he had guts for a landbounder. And Unity knew she could use someone’s help, though if the shark still seemed to be behaving erratically the next day, there was no point in risking both their lives.
“Meet me on the deck at morning,” she said. Jason left, and she drank her tea, wishing she could have asked him to sleep with her—just to sleep, so she wouldn’t feel alone. But even if she had been willing to relent to that extent, it wouldn’t have seemed right when she didn’t know what Kovir was going through.
She dozed for a few hours, woke before dawn and was on the deck shortly afterwards. Loosening her saber in its scabbard, she watched a half-circle of light edge over the horizon into the east, over Denalay. Thankfully there was no sign of the shark, and the officer of the watch told her they’d seen nothing untoward during the night. Jason climbed up the ladder to the deck.
“Ready to go?” he said.
It was well past six bells by then, so Lera nodded, hoping desperately that Garser would wait for their return. Having Jason with her would make no difference if Garser wanted to launch the attack, since Jason had already fulfilled his role in identifying Richard Alth and was probably more expendable than Kovir as a result.
“Sir,” the officer of the watch called out.
Me? Lera thought, but the tone of his voice had her moving at once, pushing past the deckhands to join him. He handed her a spyglass and told one of the men to pass the word for the captain.
Lera put the glass to her eye and focused. A dark speck moved away from Princeps, heading towards them, but the shape wasn’t Kovir. It drew closer and she made it out—a rowboat with two men inside.
She handed the spyglass back and watched the sea almost as tensely as she kept an eye on the rowboat sculling closer, because the last thing they needed was the shark making an appearance. Garser reached the quarterdeck and told the officer to run up warning colors. Of course, she thought, if Alth was in possession of tons of explosives, who was to say some of those couldn’t be on the approaching boat?
A red-and-black flag went up, and the two men in the boat stopped sculling. One stood and cupped both hands around his mouth.
“Captain Garser!” His voice carried faintly across the distance between them—the wind was against him. “Lord Richard Alth has something belonging to you.”
Garser ordered a boat to be let down. “No need for you to go, Captain Vanze,” he said, though Lera thought that was because most of the crew who weren’t on duty were watching, so it would have looked odd if he’d sent a foreign woman to run his errands. She waited tensely while two of Nemesis’s deckhands rowed out, a midshipman at the prow of their boat, and the sailors from Princeps tossed a small bundle over.
Her stomach turned over. Neither blood nor mangled bodies frightened her, but she didn’t want to see what was in that bundle.
The rowboat returned, and no one on deck spoke as the midshipman climbed aboard. Lera watched him approach with the bundle under his arm, telling herself it was flattened, not the shape of a head at all.
“Stay back.” Garser spread an arm before her. “Mr. Luett, stop. Put it on the deck.”
The midshipman seemed only too happy to comply, and he got well clear as Garser approached. The bundle had been tied with string, so Garser drew a dagger and cut through the knot before
he knelt to open the canvas. He did that with finger and thumb, tensed to pull back the moment something happened, and Lera fought an urge to close her eyes.
There was a soft sigh of expelled breath from the men nearest to him. Lera pushed forward as Garser rose slowly to his feet.
On the canvas lay a smashed glass mask and thick gloves made of a smooth dappled hide. The fingers of each lay scattered where they had been cut off.
Turning, Garser shouted across to the sailors from Princeps. “What does Lord Richard want?”
“His betrothed.” Despite the wind, Lera heard their next words clearly. “He says you have till tonight to release her. Or he’ll send you some hands to fit into those.”
Jason knew at once that Kovir wasn’t going to be released, no matter what concessions Garser made. Not even if he handed the girl over.
At first he wasn’t sure what made his conviction so strong, and then he looked at the gloves, the way each finger had been methodically severed. That. It was a petty yet vicious sign, done by a man who obviously enjoyed having the upper hand—bad choice of words there, he thought, but he was certain of it. Richard wasn’t likely to treat this trade of hostages as a business-as-usual transaction, something where both sides held true to their word.
He had to warn Lera, but he couldn’t do so where anyone else might hear, because his suspicions would give Garser all the excuse he needed to leave Kovir to rot. Think, he told himself. There had to be a way out.
The rowboat was on its way back to Princeps, oars stroking the water. Garser watched it for a moment longer, his face set and expressionless, then turned as if to make for the hatch. Jason moved forward.
“Excuse me, Captain, but may I have a word with you?” he said. “In private?”
Garser looked as though a leprous beggar had barred his way, but Jason felt sure he would have tossed even such a beggar a penny if he knew others were looking. For all his faults, open rudeness wasn’t one of them.
“Make it brief.” He turned to his first officer. “Mr. Deldeon? In five minutes.”
Jason had enough time on the way to the great cabin to compose his thoughts, and when the door shut behind the two of them, he got straight to the point. “May I speak to Meghan?”
“The prisoner? Why?”
“Because once we hand her over, we have no guarantee Alth will hold to his side of the bargain and free his hostage,” Jason said. Garser, not being a fool, was already thinking that, so they might as well get it out into the open. “But we might be able to work on her instead. If she has any influence over Alth, she might be able to secure Kovir’s release.”
With a snort of what might have been tired contempt, Garser dropped into the nearest chair. “Have you forgotten she killed a man?”
“No, but what does that have to—”
“She’s a woman without honor or integrity, that’s what it’s got to do with this.”
Jason never lost his temper, but he had never liked Garser either and he didn’t think before he replied. “With all due respect, Captain, I’m not sure either of us has a leg to stand on when criticizing someone else’s integrity.”
Garser’s brows came together and he leaned forward. The shift in weight made his chair creak, but that was the only sound in the cabin.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
Damn. Jason could have kicked himself. He cast about for some innocent explanation of what he had just said.
“Answer me, Remerley.” There was an unpleasant undertone to Garser’s voice.
No inspiration came to mind, leaving Jason with no choice except to tell the truth. Wonderful, he’d probably ruined any chance Kovir might have had.
“I mean, you didn’t tell Captain Vanze you were married before you made advances on her,” he said evenly, bracing for the reaction.
“And what concern is that of… Oh.” A slow grin touched Garser’s face and he lowered his voice as if to impart a confidence. “You want her. Don’t waste your time. That one couldn’t get warmed up if she was in a bathtub full of oysters with Arvane himself.”
Jason realized his fingers were pressing hard into his palms—not in an attempt to control himself, but as if tightening into fists—and forced himself to stop. Picking a fight with Garser would be a very bad idea and certainly wouldn’t help anyone, though he longed to tell the man to keep both his hands and his insults off Lera. He thought of her standing in the shadows of the Velvet Court, looking out of a window with those grey eyes that were deeper than the sea and held so many secrets.
Then he reminded himself he only had five minutes, most of which had probably been wasted. Before he could get the conversation back to the point, Garser went on.
“As for my marital status, why is that relevant?” he said. “I wasn’t proposing to her. So don’t be an idealist, Remerley—my wife and I certainly aren’t.”
“She knows you sleep with other women?” Jason couldn’t stop himself asking.
Garser got up. “When I’ve been away from her for too long, yes. As long as I don’t catch the clap or tumble some naïve young thing who’ll come weeping to our door with a babe in arms, my wife doesn’t mind. She understands a man’s needs. And she knows that at the end of the day, she’s the woman I married and she’s the woman I want to come home to.”
He pulled the door open and told the steward loitering outside to pass the word for one of the midshipmen. “Mr. Drale will take you to the brig,” he said to Jason. “Since you can’t be of any more use on the ship otherwise, you might as well talk to the prisoner—though I’ll bet good money nothing comes of it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a battle to plan.”
Jason had never been in a ship’s hold before, for which he was grateful. The hull was as solid there as it was elsewhere, thick overlapping planks overlaid with copper on the outside, but as he climbed down the last ladder after Harry Drale, he was only too aware he was well below the waterline. One rent in the wood and copper was all the sea needed to come rushing in.
Holding a lantern, Drale led the way through what seemed like a maze of crates, barrels and equipment. Jason followed, thinking that even the constant rumble of the engine sounded different here. He felt as though he were trapped in the whorls of a huge shell, hearing a whsh all around. A shell in which some slimy creature had died, he decided when he got his first whiff of the brig.
A deckhand was stationed on duty outside, but he got up so Drale could unlock the barred door. Jason asked for the lantern and although Drale didn’t look happy about a potential weapon being anywhere near the prisoner, he surrendered it and relocked the door once Jason was inside. “Call me when he’s finished,” he told the deckhand, and left.
The roof of the brig touched Jason’s hair, but benches had been bolted to the floor at either side, and he sat on the one that wasn’t occupied. The girl he’d seen before lay along the other, which was covered with a pallet to turn it into a makeshift bed. A threadbare sheet was draped over her.
Jason wondered if she was sick, because her hair was matted and her eyes sunken. She didn’t seem to notice him, but he remembered how she’d fought off a sailor who’d been sent after her on the docks. Whether that had been due to luck and desperation or to cunning and skill, he was better off not underestimating her.
“I’m Jason Remerley.” He introduced himself out of the force of long habit. “And you are?”
A long moment passed before her eyes turned in his direction, and when she spoke, her voice sounded like sand falling. “Meghan Nucira.”
Jason resisted an urge to put the back of his hand to her forehead and his fingers to her wrist for a pulse, partly because he didn’t have any rubbing alcohol and partly because she might not take too well to being touched by some stranger. “You’d probably prefer to be alone, so I’ll get to the point. We’re going to take you to Lord Richard Alth so he’ll�
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“You’re handing me over to him?” Her head lifted off an elbow she’d bent in lieu of a pillow.
“He’s holding a Denalait hostage. We need that hostage returned unharmed, because we have enough problems already without strained diplomatic relations. I realize Richard isn’t likely to live up to his side of the bargain once he has you back, but is there anything you could do to help? Would it make a difference if you talked to him?”
Meghan sat up. The sheet fell to her waist and she clutched it, holding it to her chest although she was clothed.
“You don’t know him at all, do you?” There was more animation in her voice now, but it was the sound of bitterness and dread. “He never listened to a word I said. No one did, so I suppose I couldn’t blame him, but—no, he wouldn’t give a toss. Please, I don’t want to be with him.”
Wonderful, Jason thought. It could all be a performance, but if it was true, they’d be handing a girl over to be forced into marriage—at best.
“You didn’t want to marry him?” he said.
Meghan shook her head.
“Forgive me for pressing the issue, but what was so unpalatable about marriage to him?” No matter how he had been treated, Jason knew someone from Richard’s social class would have fared much better—and despite being illegitimate, Meghan was descended from a long line of kings. He could understand not wanting to marry a criminal threatening to murder thousands of people, but her reaction suggested she had never wanted a union with a man who was well-bred, powerful and wealthy.
Everything I wanted to be when I was younger, he thought.
A deep breath left her, and she slumped back as if that air had been the only thing holding her upright. “My uncle arranged our betrothal, but I never wanted to. I…every time he touched me, it…” A raw flush rose in her face, and she was pale enough for him to see it clearly. Her last words came out in a rush. “I’d tell him we could, once we were married, but if you let him have me now, there won’t be anything to stop him. Please.”
The Highest Tide Page 15
