Ison of the Isles

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  Harg had been the only Adaina at the table as the news was delivered, and he saw the Torna faces around him hardening with hatred. It was exactly the effect Dorn had wanted to provoke: to divide the races and prevent any such alliance as the one Harg had been labouring to achieve. At that moment, there was nothing he could do but express revulsion and outrage as loudly as anyone in the room. But all the while he was aware, as they appeared not to be, that Tiarch and her navy were the very people who had driven the Adaina to the brink of such vicious retribution. At the same time, he had felt the horrible truth that it was now his problem to solve.

  When he had been able to get Tiarch alone, he had made the case that she needed to let the Adaina take care of Dorn. Otherwise, he argued, it would devolve into an endless revenge cycle, Torna against Adaina. “The Innings are the enemy,” he had said. “We can’t get distracted killing each other.” She had accepted the argument, and that was when he had gotten the three ships to command, with the understanding that his first mission was to pacify his own people.

  Before they could appear on deck, Harg and Jearl had to wait for the deck officer to initiate a ceremony involving whistles, bells, parades, and commands. Jearl was a stickler for propriety, and all the naval rituals were punctiliously performed on his ship. It struck Harg as a little antiquated; the Northern Squadron was still mimicking a pre-war Inning Navy, before the transformations wrought on it by Admiral Talley. But he said nothing. The formality was important to them, and not to be meddled with lightly.

  Once on deck, they found that the squadron was nearing the entry to Harbourdown Bay, with the Smoke in the lead. “You sent the cutter ahead?” Harg asked. He had not wanted his own people to mistake the warships for an enemy and sail out to attack.

  “Yes, sir,” Jearl answered.

  “Shall we give them a salute?”

  “I had anticipated that.”

  Jearl gave the order for the gunnery crews to assemble, and Harg watched from the quarterdeck as they cast loose their cannons and took up their tompions, admiring their organization and training. The common sailors were mostly Adaina, but they obeyed their Torna gun captains with a willing efficiency that gave Harg hope for the blended Navy he wanted to create. “They’re very well trained,” he said to Jearl.

  Jearl’s deep-lined face didn’t move at the compliment. “They’re on their best behaviour because you’re watching,” he said. It was the first intimation Harg had had that Jearl noticed the effect an Adaina admiral had on an Adaina crew.

  As they cleared the headland, the bay and town became visible, and Harg scanned the ships at anchor. All four of the captured Navy vessels were there—Windemon, Pimpernel, Spinneret, and the majestic Ison Orin. With surprise, he recognized a fifth one as the armed sloop from Yora. Barko had been out collecting, it seemed. The thought of being able to confront a captured Captain Quintock filled Harg with evil glee.

  As the Smoke entered the bay, she fired a rolling salvo, magnificently precise in its timing, that echoed back from the cliffs and the dark walls of the Redoubt above the town. In answer, the ships at anchor began to fire—a chaotic, haphazard barrage that made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in discipline. Jearl made no comment, for which Harg was grateful.

  A six-oared skiff set out from the Ison Orin even before the Smoke cast anchor, with Barko Durban perched in the stern, grinning hideously enough to scare the fish away. Harg waved to him from the quarterdeck, even if it was beneath the dignity of an admiral. As the skiff pulled up beneath the warship’s side, catching onto the main chains with a boathook, Barko yelled up, “Hey Harg! Can’t you go anywhere without warships following you home? Keep this up, and we’ll need a bigger harbour!”

  Soon he was up on deck, looking more piratical than ever, having acquired a gold earring to add to his raptor nose and predatory squint. When Harg introduced him to Captain Jearl, there was a moment when he felt the discontinuities were beyond ironing out; but Jearl took it in stride, or at least with no more than the usual reserve.

  “The townsfolk have prepared a little welcome for you all,” Barko told them, “but they’re wondering if the sailors are all going to have shore leave at once.”

  Harg said, “Jearl, get together with the other captains and work out a schedule for leave, one ship at a time. The town’s too small for all of them.”

  Jearl merely nodded, but Barko gave Harg a sideways glance, reacting to the easy way he issued orders to a man whose power over them would have been absolute three months ago.

  “I was hoping the Ripplewill might have made it back,” Harg said.

  Barko shook his head. “We thought you might know something of her.”

  “We got separated in Tornabay. So you haven’t heard anything from Torr? Calpe? Gill?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I see the Vagabond’s not here either,” Harg said, having scanned the harbour for Holby Dorn’s boat.

  “I gave Dorn to understand that he wasn’t very welcome here any more,” Barko said.

  “You’ve heard what he’s been up to?”

  “Yes.” Barko, to his credit, looked uncomfortable. “I need to talk to you about that, Harg.”

  So there was more to the story. Harg wanted to hear it, but the subject was too grim for the moment. “When we get ashore. Jearl, pass the word to the other captains. We’ll meet on the town dock as soon as they can get there.” He turned to leave in Barko’s skiff, but was delayed by a short leave-taking ceremony, approvingly observed by the Adaina seamen on deck.

  “Vice-Admiral, eh?” Barko said to him when they were in the skiff alone.

  Not sure of his footing, Harg said, “I needed some public acknowledgment from Tiarch that she was with us.”

  “So who’s the admiral?”

  Trust Barko to get right to the point. He knew perfectly well that the only admiral over Tiarch’s navy was Tiarch herself. Which meant, technically, that Harg was following her orders. “We need them, Barko,” Harg said. “The chance was too good to pass up. It was like a navy was being handed to me, free.”

  “Well, the Tornas in town are happy about it,” Barko said.

  “What about the Adainas?”

  “Depends on who you ask. You need to step carefully, Harg.”

  For a moment, Harg felt miles out of his depth in these treacherous political waters. Blowing things up he was an expert at. Putting things together was infinitely harder.

  The feeling of inadequacy faded when he stepped onto the town dock and saw the crowd assembled in the market square. A huge cheer went up as he waved at them. The Adaina captains of the other captured ships were already assembled, and he touched hands all around and got the story of how they had captured the sloop from Yora—the handiwork of the fierce young captain of the Windemon, a woman named Katri.

  A decorated open carriage rolled into the square and pulled up at the end of the dock, but Harg wouldn’t budge toward it until the three Torna captains joined them. This event was accompanied by an impressive amount of pomp and regalia. Harg introduced the captains all around—the Tornas dignified and official in their uniforms, the Adainas with an air of rebel outlawry about them. Together they walked down the dock to the waiting carriage, a pasted-together coalition of opposites with the seams already showing.

  But that seemed not to matter to the crowd. As the officers climbed into the carriage and set out on a slow circuit around the square, all the bells in town began to ring. Big, deep bells tolled; bright brass bells jangled; boat bells, harbour bells, and hand bells clanged. The music cascaded down from the roofs and windows, washing over them all. Then the big guns far up in the fort joined in, booming in joy, a thundering bass to the treble of the bells. The cheers sounded like breakers on the shore.

  Harg felt utterly engulfed in love. It was like sunlight soaking into his limbs, warming him, making h
im light and buoyant. He wanted to stretch his arms out wide enough to embrace all of Harbourdown, to give them back what they were giving him.

  The carriage circled the market square once, then set out down some of the nearby streets, and returned at last to the square, pulling up at Rosenry’s, the tavern that had become the improvised assembly-house of the rebellion. On the steps, Majlis Callow and the other prominent merchants of the town were waiting to welcome them all. After some short speeches, they all went in to the back room, where a feast was waiting. Tankards and lobster broke the ice, and soon Tiarch’s officers, insurgent leaders, and merchants were all laughing and drinking together.

  As Harg looked around the room in a golden haze of beer and conviviality, the problems seemed surmountable. The Tornas officers’ protectiveness of their rules and status, the Adainas’ lack of training, the differences in custom, all of it seemed resolvable. He found Barko and Jearl standing on either side of him, and said, “You see, this is what we need. A navy that’s a genuine combination. We’ve got to show the Innings we can collaborate, all of us together.”

  “Sounds like a toast to me,” Barko said.

  And so Harg called out for quiet and proposed the toast, “All of us together.”

  Everyone raised their glasses and repeated, “All of us together!”

  Later, he and Barko went out to smoke a pipe on the porch of the inn. A rain squall had passed while they had been inside, and now a reckless wind was rocking the harbour boats, making their masts swing like pendulums. The square was empty.

  “So what’s this news about Dorn?” Harg said. “Has he done something I don’t know about?”

  Barko took a long, thoughtful pull on his clay pipe before answering. “It’s not so much what he’s done as what he’s saying, and how it’s changing people’s opinions.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “You can probably guess. He’s calling us all collaborators. He was questioning our motives even before the news arrived that you had joined Tiarch.”

  “I didn’t join Tiarch!” Harg said sharply. “She joined me.”

  “Either way. Dorn says he’s the only true Adaina leader, the only one who never served the Innings, never truckled with the Torna. He says he was fighting back while you were sucking your thumb, and now he’s still fighting back while you’re sucking up.”

  “Asshole,” Harg said darkly.

  “It makes sense to a lot of people.”

  It made sense because there was a kernel of truth in it. It also spoke to the deep resentments built up through the years of Torna power and Adaina subjection. It appealed to the base parts of people’s natures.

  “Look, I respect Dorn for what he did in past,” Harg said. “But it got him nowhere. His real problem is that there’s a new leadership with better ideas, who want to do what it takes to win.”

  Barko shrugged. “All the same, I wouldn’t go into the Adaina section of town alone at night, if I were you.”

  This shook Harg to the bone. “Really? Is it that bad?”

  “There are people who have been whipping themselves up into a frenzy over this. It’s like you opened the lid, and everything’s exploding out. With Dorn questioning your motives, it could get really nasty.”

  Uppermost in Harg’s mind was a feeling of betrayal. He had just fooled himself into believing he was loved, and now, like every other time in his life, he found it wasn’t true.

  Right under that was exasperation at the short-sightedness of it. People cared more about airing their grievances than about solving them. “Damn it,” he said. “Why can’t they just leave me alone and let me win for them?”

  There was a long silence. When Harg finally looked over, Barko was watching him appraisingly. “We do have a system for dealing with this,” he said. “A system that would wipe out all doubt about your motives.”

  He was talking about dhota-nur. Harg looked away, his jaw set.

  Barko went on, “It’s making people pretty nervous that Tiarch is in Lashnish with the Isonstone, and you’re here.”

  “Tiarch can have the damned Isonstone, and welcome to it,” Harg said.

  “You’re in the minority on that.”

  “Well, my vote is the only one that matters.”

  Barko was shaking his head. “I don’t get it, Harg. You’re already doing all the work an Ison would do. Why not have the legitimacy?”

  Harg had never talked to anyone about this, not even Tway. For a while he stared out into the harbour, at the magnificent fleet assembled there. Reluctantly, he said, “Do you know what dhota-nur is?”

  “It’s getting rid of all the bad memories, all the mistakes, all the crap that collects in your life and controls you,” Barko said. “Why would you not want that?”

  In a low voice Harg said, “Take away all the bad memories from my life, and there wouldn’t be anything left of me. That’s all I am—just a collection of mistakes and rotten motives. If a dhotamar made me into a good person, I wouldn’t be myself any more.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself, Harg,” Barko said.

  “I’m not apologizing. If I didn’t have any regrets or grudges, I don’t know if I’d want to get up in the morning, much less do what it takes to be Ison. We don’t need a good man to lead us, Barko. We need someone mean and cunning. Dhota-nur wouldn’t make me a better commander. It’s too much like . . . mental castration.”

  “Oh.” For a moment, Barko was shocked into silence by this image. “Well.”

  They stood awkwardly, not looking at each other. At last Barko said, “Ison Orin went through dhota-nur, and it didn’t neutralize him.”

  “He lost, Barko,” Harg said.

  “So you’re saying all these centuries the Grey Folk have been wrong about what makes a good leader?”

  “Don’t ask me what the Grey Folk think.”

  Barko eyed him sideways. “Would it be different if the Heir of Gilgen weren’t your kmora-father?”

  Harg felt something inside him tense at mention of Goth. Since failing to rescue him, Harg had felt an overlay of guilt on top of all the other feelings. It felt, irrationally, as if he hadn’t tried hard enough. As if, on some level, he hadn’t really wanted Goth to be free. “What-ifs don’t matter,” he said.

  Barko fell silent. As they stood there, Harg’s thoughts strayed back to his childhood—a time when random, unpredictable things had constantly happened to him, and everyone in his life had proved unreliable, Goth most of all. By age twelve he had known that the only person he could ever really trust was himself. To lose any control over himself was like letting go of a life preserver in a cold ocean. It was, simply, a matter of survival.

  The door behind them banged open and Katri sauntered out. “What are you two doing out here?” she said. “Everyone was asking where you were.”

  Shaking off his mood, Harg turned to go back inside. “Come on, Barko,” he said, “there’s still beer left.”

  *

  When the warship Smoke cleared the headlands of Ekra, there was nothing but the north wind and the steely waves of the Widewater ahead. Unprotected now by the island’s forested hills, she heeled over and surged ahead, the water boiling under her bow. The clouds seemed almost low enough to snag and tear on her masthead.

  Harg braced himself against the Smoke’s quarterdeck rail, glorying in the sudden pitch of the deck under his feet. It felt good to get the details blown out of his brain, to be actually doing something. A stinging spate of wind-blown spray struck his face, and he grinned. The ship had too much sail on for safety, but he loved the sensation of the straining oak muscles beneath his feet.

  Ahead and behind sailed the long, staggered line of his fleet. The ships ahead were already taking in sail; the ones behind were still in the lee of Ekra. It was a grand sight, all of them together. Seven tall
warships: it was a fleet to go to a man’s head and make him cocky, if he was so inclined.

  Captain Jearl approached across the quarterdeck, and Harg forced his face back into a proper military impassiveness. The ship’s crew was mounting the ratlines to reef the sails. Each seemed to know his or her job; their movements were smoothly synchronized. Harg was about to praise their training when he saw the captain frowning critically at some imprecision, invisible to him, and he decided to stay quiet.

  Smoke’s first lieutenant, Jonci Garlow, joined them on the quarterdeck. She was the most radical of the innovations Harg had thrust upon the unwilling Torna officers in the past two weeks. It had caused one of his few outright arguments with Jearl. He had finally persuaded the captain that they needed to train up some Adaina officers by having them serve under men of superior knowledge of Navy discipline and procedures. Jonci had seemed like a good choice for the experiment. She had spent a lifetime commanding ships, mostly merchant vessels out of Harbourdown, where merchantmen often had to fight to keep their cargoes. Her cool competence had impressed Harg, and so far she had taken her fastidious captain’s directions with tact. Harg badly wanted her to succeed.

  She squinted off toward the northern horizon, where a dark streak of squall was heading toward them. She wore her dark, grey-shot hair pulled back and tied in a scarf, but it always looked windblown anyway. “Weather’s not with us,” she said. “The Mundua are hunting.”

  “They can’t swallow ships this big,” Harg said. “We’d get stuck in their throats.”

  The frown on her sharp face told him she wasn’t convinced. Reaching inside her uniform coat, she brought out a packet of dreamweed. She walked across to the lee rail and stood there, the wind whipping her hair about, while she cast a handful of weed onto the waves. Harg realized the crew on deck was watching her—the Adaina with anxious approval, the Torna with amused contempt. He clenched his teeth, knowing she had just lost face with half the crew; yet if he stopped her, he would lose the trust of the other half.