Red Tide

by Marc Turner

  “Your Highness,” Gunnar interrupted, his voice tight. “Up ahead.”

  The wave of water-magic beneath the boat receded.

  Ebon looked south. Farther along the coast, a promontory jutted into the sea. Around it the water was chopped to foam by hidden rocks, while protruding from amid the white-flecked waves … A ship. Or the wreck of a ship, more accurately. The vessel was broken in half along its waist, the middle part sticking up from the sea to bare the craft’s guts. One of the ships from the Hunt? What flag was she flying?

  “Take us closer,” Ebon said.

  A wave of water-magic burgeoned beneath the hull again, and the boat drifted forward.

  The sea was covered with a layer of detritus from the wreck: pieces of wood, lengths of rope, fragments of sailcloth, and so many scraps of paper someone might have ripped up a book and scattered its pages across the waves. Ebon’s boat entered the wreck’s shadow. The coming of dusk had drained the blue from the water to leave it the color of steel. The prince studied the ship’s exposed beams where they had been snapped in two. The wood was twisted and splintered, yet there were no indentations he might have taken for a dragon’s tooth marks. Nor was there anything on or around the vessel that showed which city it hailed from. Its masts were gone, snapped near their base, and there was no flag conveniently floating on the water.

  “There’s another one,” Vale said, and Ebon looked up to see a second wreck appear from behind the flank of the first. Lying on its side in the shallows, just a section of its upturned hull was visible, blanketed in green fuzz. Each wave dragged at the ship, tugging it a handspan shoreward before releasing it to settle back again.

  “Watcher’s tears, there’s more,” Gunnar said, pointing.

  Beyond the promontory, a stretch of shingle had come into view. Upon it were grounded the carcasses of three more vessels: a fishing boat with its nets tangled about it, a galley with shattered oars jutting from its oar holes, a Corinian corrick with its green-trimmed mainsail half covering it like a shroud. “It’s like a ship’s boneyard,” Gunnar whispered, and the sun-bleached ribs of the corrick’s frame did indeed look like the bones of some monster of the deep. Beyond the strip of fireweed marking the high-water line were rolls of cloth, splintered planks, rusting crayfish baskets.

  But no bodies. Interesting, that.

  Ebon scanned the waves again. The rocks around the promontory might account for one wreck, but five? Some storm that would have been. Yet what other explanation could there be? Might a dragon have set up home nearby and be preying on the vessels journeying through these waters?

  Vessels like Ebon’s own, for example.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Gunnar, and the mage released more of his power to take the boat skipping south across the waves.

  Inland, the setting sun had ignited the haze of dust, turning the sky russet and gold.

  * * *

  Karmel stood on the deck of the Grace, staring southwest toward Gilgamar. The wind of the ship’s passage rushed in her ears. Two water-mages were on board, and the wave they had conjured up to carry the vessel thundered beneath its bows as if the ship were sailing on the cusp of a storm. It had taken a mere two and a half bells to make the crossing from Olaire. Faster than any dragon could follow, Karmel had been assured, but that hadn’t stopped her scanning the seas with an intensity that had left her eyes aching.

  The skyline behind Gilgamar was darkening. Occupying a narrow strip of land between the Sabian and Ribbon seas, the city seemed to comprise not one settlement but two, separated by a canal that cut straight as an arrow’s flight through the middle. On the western side—the Lower City—were mismatched houses crammed together, or stacked one atop another, or slumped against their neighbor like each was the only thing holding the other up. By contrast, the properties to the east—the Upper City—were arranged in lazy avenues, and scattered with parks and gardens, all rising up a gentle slope to a huge stone structure at the top that sparkled in the last of the light. Above the building fluttered a flag for every city in the Sabian League. The Alcazar, seat of the Ruling Council.

  The wave beneath the Grace began to subside. As the rustle of water faded, Karmel heard the hum of the city together with a multitude of clangs from the harbor on the opposite shore. At the point where the canal opened out onto the Sabian Sea was the wreck of a ship lying on its side. A victim of Dragon Day, most likely. The sight of it brought the day right back to Karmel. For a moment, she thought she could hear the screams of the dragons’ victims, only to realize it was the calls of the starbeaks circling above Gilgamar on red-flecked wings.

  Footsteps sounded behind her, and she looked back to see Caval approaching. There was that skip in his step that he always had after he’d taken oscura—as if he had to stop himself from breaking into a run. The once-whites of his eyes were now a dirty gray, and Karmel wondered how she’d missed the signs of his addiction before Dragon Day. Because she hadn’t been looking for them, of course. Because she and her brother had grown too far apart for her to see. How differently might things have gone if she had been there to arrest his slide? Had the distance between them contributed to his fall? A distance I allowed to develop as much as he did.

  Caval came to stand alongside her.

  “I thought you said the drugs weren’t working anymore,” Karmel said.

  “Does an addict need a reason for his next fix?” Caval uncorked a water bottle and took a swig. Slaking his oscura-thirst. Then his voice turned grave. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The priestess waited.

  “For leaving you alone on deck, I mean. I know sailors can be a rough crowd.”

  Karmel rolled her eyes. The day after Dragon Day, he’d said “I’m sorry,” and she had thought he was apologizing for betraying her. Instead he’d merely been apologizing for something trivial—she couldn’t even remember what. But he’d seen the expectation in her eyes, and from then on he had contrived to fashion false apologies out of ever more tenuous circumstances. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t apologized in truth, she told herself. He carried his regret with him everywhere. Better he feel remorse and not say it, than say it and not feel it. And better this forced humor than the sickness of spirit that seemed to consume him each time the oscura wore off.

  “Ah, Gilgamar,” Caval said wistfully. “The most soulless city in the Sabian League, it’s said.”

  “Why?”

  “No history—or at least none worthy of the name. Before the Dragon Gate went up, there was nothing here but swamps, and gallow crabs, and bandits extorting tolls out of anyone using the road to Dian. Then the canal was built, and the place grew fat on the fees it charged to ships passing through. The League stopped paying for a while. But Gilgamar’s Ruling Council was supported by the Storm Lords, who themselves were in a disagreement with the League over—”

  “The payment of the Levy. Yes, I know.”

  Caval raised an eyebrow.

  “Veran gave me a history lesson on the crossing to Dian. I never had him down as a student of history … but then, the man was full of surprises.”

  Her brother stared at her, then chuckled.

  Karmel shifted her gaze to the far side of the city. In the harbor beyond the canal, thirty ships bobbed at quayside in the shadow of an immense seawall.

  “The wall was built at the same time as the canal,” Caval said, following her gaze. “With the Cappel Strait blocked by the Dragon Gate, Gilgamar became the only link between the League and the south. A link that couldn’t be allowed to fall into enemy hands—hence the wall. The chains came later, though.”

  “Chains?”

  He pointed. “See those lines spanning the entrance to the harbor?” Karmel could make them out now she was looking for them—like the bowed rungs of a ladder. “Those are chains,” Caval explained. “Thick as pillars, and invested with earth-magic. Once Dragon Day started, the Ruling Council needed some way to keep the creatures out of the port. They’ve worked, too. In all the tim
e they’ve been up, not a single dragon has managed to get through.”

  One of the Grace’s water-mages was at the tiller with the captain—a woman wearing a gray suit and a permanent frown. The two of them were discussing the wreck obstructing the mouth of the canal. The order was given to take in the sails, and a handful of sailors scrambled aloft. As the Grace drew near the wreck, it rose on a wave of water-magic. The front of the wave broke against the ship in hissing foam. Karmel could make out mangled beams where a dragon must have seized it in its jaws. And swarming through the wreckage like maggots over a corpse—

  She shrank back. “What are those?”

  “Blacktooth snakes,” Caval said.

  From a distance, the waters of the canal had seemed to run black with the grime of industry. Now Karmel was closer, she could see that the channel and the sea in front of it were actually seething with glistening forms. “So many.”

  “Ah, that’s why you’ll never see a galley pass through the canal under oars. Those without water-mages employ tugs instead. Not only do the snakes tend to mess up the stroke of the oarsmen, they also have a habit of slithering up the oars to greet the rowers.”

  “They’re poisonous?”

  “Deadly. But don’t worry, you’re safe up here on deck.”

  “You’ll take care of me, will you?” Karmel said, echoing his words before she’d set off for Dian with Veran.

  Caval’s stare was appraising.

  Karmel looked back at the wreck. “Where did the snakes come from?”

  “From a tomb under the canal that collapsed a while back. Water rushed in, the snakes came out.”

  “No one’s ever tried to get rid of them?”

  “Tried, yes. Just after the collapse, in fact. A water-mage drained the canal so the tomb could be resealed to stop more snakes escaping. Then the snakes already in the channel were doused in blayfire oil and set alight. For two days afterward, the canal stayed clear. Then the snakes came back in greater numbers.” Caval gave a humorless smile. “Gilgamar is not a place to visit in open sandals.”

  Or at all, if Karmel had had her way. There’d been a time as an initiate when she had found the monotony of temple life claustrophobic and had longed to discover what lay across the sea. Now she yearned again for those days when the entirety of her world had been bounded by the shrine’s walls.

  The Grace swept over the wreck, and the wave beneath it receded as it reached the canal. Guarding the entrance on the eastern side was a fortress, the lines of it soft in the gathering gloom. A crenellated wall ran the length of the canal, patrolled by soldiers. On the western side, the land immediately adjoining the canal was a wasteland of cracked mud and weeds and rubbish. From the line of houses beyond, a gaggle of townsfolk emerged, little more than silhouettes in the half-light. The Grace slowed to a crawl, yet its passage still sent water sloshing out of the channel. The handful of blacktooth snakes washed up on the land were snatched up by children and carried away. Some of the watchers shouted out to the ship for news. Others offered to sell blackweed or fish-bone jewelry or something called tollen, while painted ladies promised to pleasure the sailors in the time it took the vessel to sail the length of the canal.

  It occurred to Karmel that there weren’t any bridges spanning the channel. No, that wasn’t quite true. Ahead she could see another fortress on the eastern side, and this one had a drawbridge that was currently raised. The bridge hadn’t been lifted at the Grace’s approach, meaning it had to have been up already. When she quizzed Caval about this, he said, “The bridge is always raised at dusk. What better way to keep the rabble in their place than to prevent them ever leaving?”

  “The poor aren’t allowed into the Upper City?”

  “Of course they are. They just need a good reason to be there. Written in blood, no doubt. And approved by one of their betters.”

  Along a street in the Lower City, Karmel saw a cart upended to form a barricade, yet there was no one manning it. From far away came the cry of a prayerseeker calling the faithful to worship. Covering the city was a nauseating sour-sweet scent like burned honeycomb.

  Caval’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Well, well.”

  Karmel looked where he indicated. On the deck a short distance away, a male Untarian was mopping the boards. He was barefooted and wore a plain susha robe. From a cord around his neck hung a fish-bone charm. Karmel studied him, wondering what she was supposed to be seeing. Then it came to her. Of course. Mazana Creed had mentioned she was sending a water-mage to accompany them as far as the Rubyholt Isles. Karmel had assumed she’d been referring to one of the two sorcerers who had hastened the Grace here from Olaire. Now she realized she was wrong.

  “Mokinda Char.”

  Caval drank from his water bottle. “Ah, he wears his disguise well, don’t you think?”

  Karmel wasn’t sure how much of a disguise it was in truth. For while the other Storm Lords had always carried themselves with an ominous self-assurance, there had never been anything of that manner about the Untarian, even when he was emir. When she boarded the Grace in Olaire, she’d spotted him on deck and not given him a second glance. There had been no reason, though, to think he had survived the bloodletting on Dragon Day. As Karmel recalled, he had been sent by the Storm Council to investigate Gensu Sensama’s death, meaning he would have been out of the firing line when Dragon Day came. Hadn’t he always been in Imerle’s pocket, though, not Mazana’s? If so, why had Mazana let him live?

  Mokinda must have heard Karmel say his name, because he looked in her direction. The priestess beckoned to him. He hesitated before setting down his mop and starting toward her.

  “What are you doing?” Caval asked Karmel.

  “Putting a little flesh on the bones of Mazana’s story.”

  “I’d have thought you were used to being kept in the dark on missions.”

  Karmel forced a smile.

  Mokinda halted in front of them. His gaze shifted from the priestess to her brother, then back again. “We should not be talking,” he said. His diction sounded alien to Karmel’s ears, even for an Untarian, for he stressed his “t”s with exaggerated care.

  “Why not?” Karmel said. “You’re not the first crewman I’ve spoken to since coming on board.”

  Mokinda did not reply.

  Karmel considered her next words. If she was going to persuade the Untarian to lower his guard, she would have to do so by degrees. “Mazana said we were going to pick up a guide from the Rubyholt Isles. So where is he?”

  “Waiting for us at the harbor.”

  “Does he know who you are?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Does anyone on board?”

  “Just the captain.”

  “And you’re not worried one of the crew might recognize you?”

  “Would you have done, if your brother hadn’t prompted you?”

  The Grace had reached the guardhouse with the upraised drawbridge. Ahead a second drawbridge came into view, this one without a fortress to protect it. Beyond, the canal opened out onto the harbor. The place had a stink to it that rivaled even the Shallows. Karmel could see the approach to the chains was bounded by stone walls that stretched back from the towers guarding the harbor entrance, forming a corridor of stone.

  “Are you coming with us as far as the Rubyholt Isles?” Karmel asked Mokinda.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  The Storm Lord blinked.

  “I can understand why you escorted us to Gilgamar—in case we met a dragon in the Sabian Sea. But there’s no reason to think there are any dragons between Gilgamar and the Rubyholt Isles. They’ll have returned to the Southern Wastes by now.”

  Mokinda wouldn’t be keeping his chips for long at the flush table, Karmel suspected, for his discomfort at her line of questioning was plain. That was good, because it meant she was on the right track.

  “As Mazana explained it to us,” she went on, “you’ve got no part to play in the destruction of the s
tone-skin fleet. No part. So what are you doing here?” Then, “Perhaps you’ve been sent to the Rubyholt Isles for a different reason. Or perhaps Mazana is holding you in reserve in case Caval and I fail.”

  Mokinda’s frown suggested that last was close to the truth … but not the whole truth. “Mazana has told you everything you need to know,” he said.

  “What we need to know maybe. I want the rest as well.”

  “What makes you think Mazana told me more than she told you?”

  “She had to tell someone.”

  Mokinda did not respond.

  Karmel bit back on her irritation, but what could she do? She had already accepted Mazana’s mission; it wasn’t as if she could threaten to back out if the Untarian didn’t answer her questions. She tried a different tack.

  “It was Jambar who warned Mazana the stone-skin fleet was coming, yes? So what else did he see in his bones?”

  “As the shaman was so keen to impress on me, all he sees are possibilities.”

  “Yet some of those possibilities must be more possible than others. What trouble are we likely to run into? What are our chances of success?”

  Mokinda finally met her gaze. “That depends on your definition of success.”

  “Completing the mission. Coming out the other side.”

  The Untarian winced.

  “That good, eh?” Caval said.

  Mokinda paused. He looked from Karmel to Caval, then made as if to speak before stopping himself. He wanted to tell them, the priestess realized. So why was he holding back? Maybe he was worried that Mazana would discover his indiscretion. Or maybe he thought telling the Chameleons would jeopardize the mission.

  Most likely, though, he’d kept his silence because he knew his expression had already said enough about what awaited Karmel and Caval in the Rubyholt Isles.